


War Party

by autolykos, thesunisnotgod (autolykos)



Series: Our Mortal Grace [1]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Academia and Archetypes, Aftermath of Possession, Ancient Necromancer, Angst with a happy ending?, Bobby's Library, Curse Breaking, Demonic Possession, Demons, Eventual Wincest, Family Feels, Family Secrets, Found Family?, Future Fic, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Magical Combat, Post Season 06 AU, Slow Build, White Magic/Ancient Magic, White Witches, black magic, spellcraft
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-05-16
Updated: 2019-07-13
Packaged: 2020-01-24 15:01:40
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 9
Words: 76,792
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18573886
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/autolykos/pseuds/autolykos, https://archiveofourown.org/users/autolykos/pseuds/thesunisnotgod
Summary: It is 2032 - America has survived the ecological crisis but is a country with no or almost no internal combustion engines permitted: no jet planes, no cars that run on gas. That is the good news; the bad is that a terrible and ancient evil is stirring in the north-western states. It's most recent victim may be an obscure mechanic in Billings, Montana. For the last twenty years Sam Campbell has been living as a slightly less obscure law professor in Stanford. Sam hasn't seen his brother since he disappeared after they defeated Leviathan; two decades later and he is convinced Dean is dead. Unlikely alliances have been forged in the intervening years so that there are new forces to fight the long war against supernatural evil in the Winchesters' absence. Then a more dead than alive stranger from Montana arrives at Sam's house with news that will shock him to his core...





	1. The Trouble With Hope

**Author's Note:**

> This is more or less canon to end Season 6 but then morphs into the Mortal Grace AU. The first book is told partly in flashback over the preceding two decades although the dramatic conclusion is very definitely focused in 2032/2033. Eventual Wincest but not until Book/Part 2: Moon and Sun and Stars. There are no angels in this story. There are references to F/M in the opening chapters but nothing explicit. This is a very long work.

# Chapter One:  The Trouble with Hope

# Early Fall 2032, California–not far from Stanford

 

“Did you just call me an asshole, asshole,” Sam asks before adding outrage to injury, “and in my own fucking home?” while a drop of the blood frothing between his teeth from the other man’s punch drops onto the face below him. Gus refuses to turn away. He tries to keep his eyes locked on Sam’s; he’s suddenly fascinated to see the tiny scars on the other man’s cheeks. For the first time he notices the odd grey hair among the chestnut locks, the faint bird tracks around his eyes.

                                                                                                                              *

Gus had found himself on a bed when he came to. A huge bed. There was a blanket underneath him, presumably to protect the sheets–from his clothes. Oh fuck, he could feel the clots of puke in his hair. Sam was sitting on the edge beside him, staring balefully at his uninvited guest. There was a knife at Gus’ jugular. It felt like a large knife, not that he was going to look at it.

“He’s in a coma at the Billings General Hospital under the name of Dan Campbell,” he said in a rapid burst. “Oh, right, I told you that already, didn’t I?”

He paused when he got no reaction from Sam and then,

“What I said before, you know, downstairs, that wasn’t mean to sound funny...”

“How long have you known he was alive?” Sam persisted.

Gus looked hesitant.

“The answer to that is really complicated and I don’t know what it’s got to do with anything... Did you really punch me?”

Sam nodded and then, “Yeah, well–it was a lot to take in,” he said. He shrugged offhand with one shoulder and without even the feeblest attempt at an apology.

He didn’t actually say, ‘Besides it was kind of on you,’ but some thoughts don’t need to be spoken, or so it struck Gus. And that one came over loud and clear.

“Oh,” Gus responded, sounding a bit surprised at the confirmation. “Am I concussed by the way?”

“Not according to Nell and she’s pretty reliable on that front,” Sam responded wearily.

“Right,” Gus said calmly, appearing to digest things. “Anyway, now I’ve told you what I came here to say and the rest is up to you, so... and please don’t think I don’t appreciate your very obvious contrition,” he paused then for a second or so, only to explode the next moment with: “It’s just I’ve realized you’re as much of an asshole as your brother. So forgive me, or rather don’t, if I fully intend being a bitch about it.”

Gus’ right arm was resting on the edge of the bed while his left arm was trapped under Sam’s knife hand. While he’d been talking, he couldn’t think of an obvious way of using it that wouldn’t roll him onto the blade. Instead, as he punched up with a clenched right fist into the other man’s jaw with all the anger seething inside him at being held at knifepoint, he twisted his neck and upper body as forcefully as he could away from the sharp edge. It meant there was no wind-up in the punch and besides he was debilitated into the bargain. It was a really good one all the same, making up in technique for what it lacked in force, he had time to think, before his body came free as Sam was rocked back by the blow–and Gus tumbled out of the bed rolling back onto his shoulders, and then somersaulting clumsily onto his feet against the bedroom wall while Sam remained where he was cradling his jaw.

Gus had effectively trapped himself, he realized, unless he could leap over the bed. The problem was it was almost wider than he was tall. And he was feeling extremely dizzy and out of breath as well as pretty nauseous. Sam sprang to his feet with his eyes locked on the other man and then bent his knees into a crouch, the knife slipping back and forth between his hands. His eyes remained fixed on Gus’ face with a ferocity that would even in normal circumstances have given the smaller man cause for concern and right now felt fucking terrifying. Clearly Sam wasn’t just extremely violent but pretty nifty for such a big guy entering middle-age.

“So how do we do this?” Gus asked him, mostly to buy time. “I mean obviously it would seriously defeat my stated purpose to maim or kill you. But I can’t let you hold a knife on me–that’s not happening, Professor Campbell. Ever.”

As bravura statements go, that was up there, Gus thought, because somehow he’d forgotten that, according to legend at least, Sam was far and away the more vicious of the two.

“Not even for your precious ‘partner’?” Sam asked.

“That’s a bridge I’m pretty sure I’ve burnt just by coming here.”

Gus knew he had to act, so he stepped in, feinted with his left hand and started to bring his right foot up and across to kick the knife out of Sam’s hand. Only Sam switched the blade into his left hand a micro-second before, and Gus wasn’t in a position to effectively block it with the feinting arm. Dumb, he thought, as he pivoted on his left heel, wheeling the extended right leg backwards in a reverse roundhouse to block the blade in a move that requires total coordination of the deep abdominal muscles, the hips and lower limbs. And while that wouldn’t normally be beyond him, it was now. His rotation faltered before he could connect, leaving his groin exposed to the knife, so he allowed himself to totter sideways and roll back onto the bed, bringing his knees towards his chest in the hope that his attacker would leap at him and he could do a sacrifice throw or even a _tomonage_. Instead Sam had surprised him by simply grabbing his ankles in one of those huge hands and yanking him forward. He couldn’t twist out of the pull; the other man was amazingly strong–he’d go for a head butt instead, he decided. Sam’s left arm forestalled that by pinning his shoulder down. It turned to be laughably easy for him as Gus had simply got nothing left. And then the knife in the right hand was at his throat again.

“Awesome,” Gus said in a not entirely successful attempt at disdain. He couldn’t help noticing the beginnings of a bruise forming on Sam’s jaw. “I got you good, though, you fucker,” he spat through clenched teeth in furious if exhausted triumph. He tried to buck under Sam’s weight but gave up when his own muscles refused to respond. The control the other man was exerting on the blade was impressive; Gus could feel it just kissing the topmost layer of skin despite his contortions.

“A love-tap,” Sam replied dismissively. “Can’t help noticing you’re still under my blade, dude.”

“Yeah. About that...”

“Oh, and please call me Sam, while you can I mean,” he smirked, though his eyes were icy with fury as he pressed the blade more tightly still.

When Gus failed to reply to that, mostly because the intensity of his own fury was suddenly draining away, he heard the other man ask if he’d called him an asshole. For a moment he felt completely disoriented by the sight of that face so close. Part of him would like to... Maybe not.

“Pretty sure I’d rather call you ‘asshole Sam’ in that case. Anyway, drawing a veil over the burning issue of which preposition should be used with the verb ‘compare’,” Gus decided to reply with studied insolence… as his eyes started to go glassy. Oh shit, he thought, here it comes again. There was a freight train thundering towards him like night itself …

Gus stilled as though the fight had gone out of him.

“That going quiet didn’t fool me for a second by the way. I’ve got to work out how to tie you up but then I think some questioning is called for. Even if I say it myself, I can be very persuasive with this particular knife,” Sam said vengefully. And then he took in both what the other man had said and that he really was unconscious. The body beside him was slack from the crash. He sighed a put-upon sigh as it dawned him he was going to have to wait for an answer.

Sam lifted the knife away from the throat of the unconscious man and dragged his body to the middle of the bed and left him there. Absently he used the edge of the blanket to wipe away the thin trickle of blood from where the blade bit. That’s what you get for letting your guard down even for a moment, he thought, and for attempting to say sorry. Though the last bit sounded sheepish even to him.

 

*

Earlier the Same Day

 

It isn’t the five hundred or so miles he’s just driven with only a short break for coffee every once in a very long while. It isn’t the confusion and lack of clarity–his head is splitting and his eyes are full of sand. And it isn’t the fact that he doesn’t have much of a plan or that he hasn’t been able to get down a decent meal in what must be months. Something is stopping Gus getting out of the truck. He feels sorely tempted by the idea of just leaning his head back and giving in to the fatigue. After all he knows he will need to be mentally rested but that isn’t really an option–he isn’t completely certain he’d ever wake up again. And while he’s so tired he doesn’t think he can see straight any longer, that isn’t the main problem either.

If he’d stopped to think about any of this, he’d still be back at the hospital. No, he’s pretty sure it’s the uncertainty. After all he might just say no, the brother–in all likelihood he will refuse to believe him. Only it isn’t that either, not entirely; it’s hope as well. And that’s the trouble with hope, he tells himself, it can overcome years of training; it can just waltz in and set aside all those habits you acquired so painfully. Knowing when to take risks and when not; of always making sure you’re as prepared as you possibly can be, and not just for your own sake but for all the other people who can get hurt if you make a mistake. That’s why you had to make sure it didn’t get the better of you. And okay, he tells himself, so despair’s infinitely worse but they’re both potentially lethal. It’s just here he is, in any case, not ready for anything, with no real idea what to say–hoping, as they say, against hope.

For a moment he can’t quite believe he’s letting himself be distracted by this mental drivel.

“I mean, dude–where do you dig this stuff up? Get a grip,” he mutters.

There’s no getting away from the doubts, though, despite the nonsense his brain insists on spouting, because this isn’t an impulse born of a brilliant insight, not even the unconscious outcome of carefully elaborated strategies. He hasn’t worked his way up to this. It isn’t really hope; not when he thinks about it. It’s more like desperation. But then, he reminds himself, I wouldn’t be desperate if there weren’t any hope at all, I’d be back where I started. So what the fuck is the difference and what fucking difference does it make, anyway?  Shit, it feels like being forced to learn to dance without any feet. And, besides, the tips of the middle fingers on his left hand are aching where they’d been damaged all those years ago. Like tiny knives stabbing into the nerves above the knuckles.

But pain you can shrug off. A lot of the time, at least.

He takes a quick look in the rear-view mirror and wipes the crud from the corners of his mouth. There’s nothing he can do about the redness of his eyes or the hollows beneath them. He’s not as shocked by his own emaciation as at finally taking in how long his hair is: it falls in waves almost to his shoulders. And even though he’s never had really long hair before, not in his entire adult life, that seems trivial compared to the realization that what he looks like is a junkie. He tucks the fall of dark locks behind his ears; he feels a need to see them.

“Definitely me,” he tells himself, rubbing the lobe of his right ear and then he sighs, “Just do it.”

He fumbles for the jacket on the back seat. It’s too big and it’s going to be too warm to wear; he doesn’t even like it–he never has, but it gives him something solid to hang on to. He clambers down from the cabin of the truck and staggers around a bit before feeling he can stand on his own feet. As he starts walking, he is almost overcome with dizziness. There is a loud buzz and then a ringing in his ears. I should be able to shake these things off, something tells him, only the reality is he can’t remember when that was last true. He understands that he gets confused. He knows with an odd kind of clarity that he can’t think clearly, not anymore. For a moment he truly understands just how very ill he is but he refuses to dwell on it. There’s something implacable inside him he can usually really on; it’s the thing he so rarely lets other people see, and even though it won’t help him shove off this endless fatigue, the muddying of his thoughts, it refuses to be stilled.

He has the presence of mind to realize he should have forced himself to drink some water at least but he can’t go back to the truck now or he won’t go through with it.

It’s two or three in the afternoon, he guesses though the sun is still high overhead as the house comes into view. It’s a rambling Victorian three-storey house where no such house should be, set back off a bosky lane, on one of the country estates the wealthy of San Francisco built among the redwoods a good way south of the city a hundred years or so before–according to the guide he’d downloaded at the last coffee stop. The other houses in the neighborhood are sprawling ranch-style homes with a great deal of wood and not much character. But this one is faced in pale green faded clapboard and seems to extend in several different directions all at one and the same time. It even has a picket fence, painted the same green, enclosing a small front yard. Gus hears an eagle cry high above and knows what it is without looking up. A chill runs through him as the sound dies away. There is a veranda on one side of the house and several smaller buildings that spread out behind it at the back in what he guesses might be a lovely and very overgrown garden. Absently, he wonders if there could be snakes: he’d heard from a student once how the more rural parts of the campus at Stanford were crawling with rattlers. Deer would get in for sure. And maybe at night there would be the cry of a mountain lion echoing around the surrounding hills. A white rose ambles across the facade. The door, which has a form of wooden porch built round it, is painted in a darker and drabber green. Several pairs of dusty gum-boots are parked to one side but still sheltered by the porch.

I could let them come out to me, he thinks; just sit outside until someone notices.

Then it strikes him there might be no one home. The owners could have gone away. He is monumentally stunned that that possibility had never occurred to him. Stunned and just for a second almost relieved. All those endless miles to find the place empty, his mission pointless. The surrounding redwoods suddenly seem gloomy and dull. There is the sound of a battery-driven dirt bike whirring along the lane somewhere behind him. A breeze has picked up and he shivers. So he manages to slip the jacket on, though it hurts his stiff shoulders to do so, braces himself, walk ups to the porch and knocks loudly on the door.

 

“Professor Campbell?” he asks with a tentative smile when someone answers the door at last. But it’s a young man, a tall kid, his head turned away and wearing large old-fashioned headphones. He has a glass of water in his hand. He has taken his time before appearing and his posture makes him seem distracted.

“I’m sorry to trouble you but I was hoping I could see Samuel Campbell. I’m an old friend, well an acquaintance really. Is…uh… he in?” Gus stammers.

He can see a vaguely female shape at the end of the hall corridor, but it isn’t light enough to make the person out clearly.

The boy turns back towards him and stumbles on the carpet, the contents of the glass striking Gus full in the face. The kid grabs his hand to steady himself and Gus feels a tiny prick as something slices across the mound of his thumb. The boy turns his hand over before lifting his head to stare at him as if in challenge.

“Jesus Christ!” Gus yells as they finally look each other in the eye.

“He’s clean,” the boy says, turning slightly to whoever is behind him. “And it’s red.”

“And since when, Bird, has that constituted proof?”

“You know as well as I do they can’t say that name without smoking out.”

“Could I see your face?” he says to the boy.

“Again?”

He turns back to Gus, who drops his eyes.

“I didn’t know. I swear I didn’t know.”

“And that’s relevant how?” the boy says, sounding a bit tetchy.

It’s uncanny, it’s his father and it isn’t. He must be much the same age as when Gus last saw Sam in the flesh. His hair is much darker; Gus thinks it’s black at first and then realizes it’s the deepest, darkest shade of chestnut, and his eyes are a light grey-blue, and brighter than his own, and the shape of his eyes is a little different in a way Gus can’t quite describe. But his face as a whole is the spitting image–though he isn’t sure that makes sense. He raises his hand to touch him, just to make sure he’s real.

“Easy there, partner,” the boy says, intercepting it. “I don’t know you.”

“Sorry. Of course,” he drops his hand. Gus knows he should just turn and go.

And then he faints.

 

He is still in the hall when he comes around. But he has been propped against the wall and the collar of his grubby shirt loosened. Someone has removed the jacket and he finds he can breathe more easily. His hair is still drenched from the holy water. The boy is sitting beside him with another glass in his hand.

“You’re seriously ill,” he says, more accusing than kind.

“Just overtired, I think. I can’t actually remember the last time I fainted. I’m not sure I ever have. But it’s been a long journey and I am kind of in a hurry to see your...uh... father.”

“Nah, you’re definitely ill. Or something like it. My sister’s calling Dad now and then she’ll have a look at you. He’s out for a run. He’ll be back soon in any case.”

They continue sitting there and the boy puts his arm around Gus to steady him as he drinks.

“You smell,” he says then.

“Sorry about that,” Gus isn’t, not really. What can it possibly matter in the great scheme of things? Let the little bastard suffer. “I guess I should have showered after the drive.”

“No I don’t mean that. Sure you reek, you know like stale and unwashed. And you look like shit. You’re grey. And you’ve got these ginormous bags under your eyes. The whites are really yellow and bloodshot. Trust me it’s not a good look. But this is something else.”

Gus feels his curiosity piqued.

“Really? Like something...uh... unexpected, out of the ordinary, uh… you know, spooky?”

“Yup, though that isn’t the word I was going to use,” the boy says rather sniffily. “More like there’s a smell of wrongness about you. Maybe some kind of contaminant. I just can’t tell. You remind me of someone as well. I can’t put my finger on it. It’s kind of annoying.”

They sit in silence after that. Despite the illness and the smell, the boy keeps his arm there. He asks Gus if he wants him to put the jacket round his shoulders. Gus can only shrug.

“The ears are cool, though,” the kid happens to mention as he tucks the leather around him. Maybe he could really get to like this boy, given the chance. And then he feels himself nodding off. He makes an attempt to wake up by grinding his head against the wall. But the boy pats him and tells him to rest. He can hear someone come up the corridor towards them but just doesn’t have the energy to open his eyes. He can hear them talking but it all sounds too far away for him to pay them any mind.

“Give him this, Bird. And then I think you should leave him there. Until Dad gets back.”

“What is it?”

“It’s a cure-all: a herbal simple to restore health. Can’t hurt and it’s only dangerous if he’s been cursed or hexed. But you’d know that right?”

That gets through to Gus. Only he’s not certain he knows what a curse is anymore or how it works. It’s like his brain has been slowly shutting down for a while now, bits of knowledge fading away–along with parts of himself.

“Nah, it definitely doesn’t feel like that. There’s something really weird going on with him though. I think you should examine him, Nell.”

“Even though he got through the wards, I don’t think either of us should be quite so close to him–not...”

“Until Dad comes back, yeah, I got that.”

 

*

Now and then Sam likes to conjugate Latin verbs when he runs. His pluperfect subjunctive could do with some work. Mostly though it’s precedents, not conjugating obviously, but rehearsing the finer points of legal argument. And it isn’t as if running à la nerd has ever made him stumble. He’d actually been reviewing some recent cases when he suddenly found himself face to face with a ‘lion’ the month before. Just a couple of bends of the road up from Alice’s Restaurant before he usually swapped the verge for the scrub grass of the headland where he liked to stop for a moment at his half-way point and stare at the Pacific. There was a spot among the ankle-twisting clumps of dry grass from where you could look out across the ocean with nothing between you and Asia, and if you turned round you had a majestic view of the waters of the Bay. He’d seen the cougar moving slowly towards him and had the presence of mind to stop running towards it. He made himself look as big as possible by puffing his chest. And it had simply turned tail and slunk off. Law cases and Latin verbs had never prevented him from finding himself in the present moment when it was required.

Only after months of effort, his daughter has finally managed to persuade him to try running mindfully just this once. The idea being not to think, not to lose himself in his preoccupations, but to be completely open to his surroundings. It isn’t working. He needs to concentrate so hard not to think he has to remind himself to keep an eye out for snakes on the trails through the grassland; he can do that on autopilot when he’s preoccupied. Waste of a good run, he thinks to himself but banishes any notion of verb endings because he’s promised to try at least. He promptly stumbles over a clump of grass and falls. He picks himself up and takes a breather. The only sound is the wind battering the clouds and the faint roar of the surf from far below. As it rushes over the shingle, the ocean is hissing at him _issem, isses, isset, issemus, issetis, issent_.

“It’s a sign!” he yells at the empty sky. “Okay,” he continues in a mutter. “I’ve given it my best shot only now I want to get home in one piece and without a twisted ankle, so screw being present, I’m going to treat myself to some irregular verbs.”

There’s still a way to go before he has to turn back. The odd thing though as he resumes his pounding of the trail is that his mind seems to have gone blank. He is running on auto, scanning the ground as the path takes him back onto the road. The ocean is to his right now and the Bay to his left and there’s not a thought in his head. Sudden-onset dementia? Or maybe I’ve discovered the Void? Aha! A thought, two even, he thinks with a little shudder of relief:  thank God. I’m back. And with that reassurance he suddenly experiences something he will later tell his daughter feels like a shadow crossing his soul. Though it is more like a whisper, or like the sound of something skittering across his mind too fast to track, than a visual perception. It stops him dead. He reaches for the phone in the pack round his waist, and at that very moment it starts to ring. He turns immediately and starts running for the car like the devil’s behind him as the signal connects.

His only thought now is to get home as soon as possible. His feet seem to devour the road as Nell tells him there’s a guy in the hall who says he wants to see him. Bend after bend, down the hill, passing the odd car. The wind is scouring his face and arms. And then through a stand of redwoods, down a little gulch where he always keeps a wary eye out for rattlers and then he bursts through a stand of eucalypts to sprint the final stretch to his car. He breaks the speed limit down the winding curves and then takes the back road around Woodside to approach the estate, trying to convince himself there’s nothing to worry about. And it’s not as though he is intuitive. Psychic, on the other hand, most definitely–at least he used to be. Usually your sense of time has got mixed up when you feel these things and you’re actually anticipating something you knew was going to happen but have forgotten. What is today? No one’s birthday that’s for sure. A Friday, so with any luck Nell will be cooking and there is no work he has to prepare. He’d said he’d stop by Todd’s later, he remembers, although not why. He is drumming his hand against his thigh as he negotiates the last few turns in the lane and then skids to a stop right in front of the house instead of parking at the side because he has seen the front door is ajar. Infuriatingly he gets tangled in the seat belt for a moment and almost trips on the porch but then he is through the doorway and the first thing he sees is Bird huddled on the floor of the hall his arms around a stranger who is puking and flailing his limbs in some kind of spasm. Nell is trying to grab the man’s feet but they keep jerking away from her.

It’s enough to focus his attention completely. Suddenly his mind feels calm and alert, even though his heartbeat is accelerating as his body prepares for violence.

“Nothing” he whispers to himself, “is ever going to hurt them, not while I’m still breathing.”

 

As it happens Gus is only half-conscious for the big reunion. When their father comes home. By then his limbs are in spasm and he is vomiting. Only to Gus it feels like it is happening at one remove. He’s mostly just drifting away and only a small part of him is even vaguely aware of heaving his guts out and of his limbs going every which way. It’s not as if he is oblivious to the fact that he is bleeding from the nose and mouth and maybe around the eyes as well. But it just doesn’t seem to matter that much. Their father must have picked him up at that point and carried him down the corridor–he thinks he got him good with whatever was left in his stomach–anyway, when he next comes round for a bit, he’s on the kitchen table, his head pillowed on a chair cushion. A girl is examining his head and running her fingers across the glands in his throat. She’s older than Bird, he’d guess, and has long dark blonde hair with streaks of darker red-gold in it. She keeps having to sweep it back so it doesn’t tickle his nose.

“I made Dad wait outside because he was making me nervous,” she explains.

“Sam,” Gus croaks.

“That’s his name, but please be patient. This won’t take long.”

“What’s your name?” he whispers.

“Nell. That’s short for Ellen.”

She turns aside from her inspection and her eyes catch the light as she does so. They’re a softly gleaming green that makes him think of moss agate. It isn’t just the eyes; she has her uncle’s mouth and his eyebrows, even if her face is more oval and shows the cleaner lines of her father’s jaw, or could be her mother’s, for all he knows.

“Bird, could you get his things and bring them in? All his clothes and personal effects. There was definitely no sign in his aura you could detect?”

“No, and anyway, the signs are unmistakable cos they’re so like a target: kind of like black and red squiggles in the yellow band. There’s none of that.”

Gus really doesn’t have a clue what any of that means. It should sound familiar, he knows, but then again everything he was once certain of feels like it’s receding from him at the speed of light.

He has no idea the boy is still holding his hand until he lets it go to do what she asked.

“My keys, the jacket…,” he somehow manages to gasp through clenched teeth as he tries to stop his muscles running amuck. The tabletop feels painfully hard against his aching body.

Gus hears the door opening and then a huge shadow looms over him. Yup, there’s puke and blood all over the other man’s chest. And he smells hot with the smell of sweat and panic. He has the jacket in his hands.

“This it?” the shadow asks, obviously not recognizing the worn leather.

“Bird, come back, I’ve had an idea,” his sister calls after the boy, her tone urgent. Only he has already disappeared. The kid can move fast though because he seems to come back with his stuff before Gus can blink. About three different plastic bags plus a holdall (which has his weapons in) and the instrument case.

She asks Bird if he’s certain the man was wearing the jacket when he came in. She thinks he was but can’t be sure. Bird tells her he’d taken it off when the guy fainted. She asks him what happened then.

“His breathing eased and he got some color back almost immediately,” Bird says. “And then I tucked it round him cos I was worried, I mean concerned, he was cold and then he fell asleep.”

“Okay,” she responds after a second or two’s deliberation. “Let’s think about this forensically. He’s not hexed or cursed, or not the target of a hex in any case, but his reaction to the simple was classic. There’s no two ways about it. It’s the tiny amounts of thymol and limonene in the medical solution the magic reacts against. So this has to be a supernatural assault.

For a hex to work, there has to be something personal of the target’s in the hexbag. Which mean maybe something of his is in the bag along with something belonging to the intended victim–the target. Or maybe they share a close psychic tie...” Then she blanches. “There’s another and very unwelcome possibility and that is that the witch who made it was so powerful, there is a residual effect. If, say, the original hex was created to render the intended victim unconscious very quickly, then the residual effect might to be make Dad’s friend pretty much the way he was when you met him at the door. Though I think he would have to be connected to the victim in some way. It would take time too. And I just don’t think that’s it somehow.”

“Any ideas?” she says to everyone in the room.

Gus starts throwing up again, blood this time. Or at least that’s what it tastes like. He can feel his heart start to race and then it slows very alarmingly.

“Shouldn’t we just assume it’s a hex and he’s not my ‘friend’ by the way?” Sam says.

She seems to take a decision.

“Let’s clear the decks. Dad, please lift him off the table. You can have your reunion with your non-friend later on; right now I need your help. I’m going to need a knife. Holy water. A silver spell bowl. Maybe scissors.”

Sam picks Gus up and puts him in a chair while Bird gets her the instruments. He plunks a large glass bottle on the table. Gus tries to hold on to Sam, and then realizes he doesn’t have the energy and lets go.

“You think it’s the jacket?” her father asks.

“Bird, it’s safest if you do the cutting.”

Gus starts going into spasm again.

“Hold him down, Dad. Get ready for mouth to mouth. His airways sound like they’re closing.”

Sam only needs one arm for the job. Of holding Gus down. He reaches his other hand into his mouth and scoops out a load of bad stuff and wipes it on his chest. So what happened to the legendary fastidiousness? Gus thinks as his spine arches. Oh, of course, kids. He can make out Bird slashing the seams of the jacket lining. All there is underneath is leather. One of Sam’s sleeves is covering his ear and all of a sudden he can hear his own heartbeat getting slower and slower, just a faint thud getting fainter. Which brings back one very unwelcome memory. Oh fuck, he’d actually made it all the way here and now he wasn’t even going to be able to tell him.

“Check behind the breast pocket, Bird,” Sam instructs his son.

Bird tugs hard at the pocket and then yanks at it for all he is worth. The whole pocket comes away apart from the bottom seam; a little bundle of tiny twigs falls to the ground from behind it. The boy dives for it, picks it up in his bare hands and is about to throw it in the bowl. Gus fumbles desperately at his arm. It’s obvious to everyone he needs to have a closer look at it. It’s purely instinct though, he has no idea what he’s doing.

“Dude, what is it? We’ve got to get this done, or you will be,” Bird says urgently.

Only he turns for a moment towards him, letting him see the tracings of letters on the little ribbon surrounding the twigs. Gus knows what they mean but can’t put them in context. He notices the tiny bits of clay in the ribbon and in amongst the twigs are strands of grey-blonde hair that are shorter and thicker than his own.

Gus nods with the last of his strength. The boy throws it in the bowl.

As it hits the sides of the silver bowl, there is a screech like a blade across glass. The twigs burst into flames. Nell waits for the bundle to smolder and then pours the holy water into the bowl. The black smoke turns grey and then white. Little flakes of ash drift in the air.

Absolutely no reaction. Gus can feel a cramping pain in his heart. His life is ebbing away second by second for lack of oxygen. The boy shakes the pocket, tearing it away from the final seam and a tiny coin falls to the floor. Even though the man in his arms is not far from death’s door, Sam can feel the body suddenly struggle to grasp at the coin. Somehow he manages to twist against the considerable strength Sam is exerting and hunch over for it. He makes a terrible, anguished sound as he does so.

“He’s golluming, Nell,” Bird yells as he grabs the coin away from the stranger.

The boy flips the torn-out pocket onto the table. He looks at the others, thinks about his options and goes for an executive decision; he swallows the coin.

The man collapses back into his father’s arms the moment the coin disappears down his gullet.

“Cursed object,” Nell says. “Shit, it’s the only thing we didn’t consider. Its effects would cause the same reaction, I guess. And Bird wouldn’t have detected it because it doesn’t have to be targeted,” she explains. “Only that’s not it, the coin I mean, that’s just a prompt.”

Sam can almost feel the death rattle approaching. He rips the man’s shirt away and moves to lay him on the table for CPR, which is when he sees the inside face of the pocket now exposed on the table.

“What the hell’s that?” he shouts as Nell follows his finger. The stranger is completely unconscious now, and they all stare at the back of the pocket that had been revealed when Bird threw it on the table although none of them had noticed. Nell reacts immediately by chucking holy water on the material. A pattern of faint silver-grey marks blazes up: a ring of wedge-shaped characters surrounding a fractal design.

“It looks like a defixio, you know, a katadesmos,” she says. “A form of execration, oh for Christ’s sake–ok, maybe not: a curse tablet, only I’ve never seen anything truly like it.”

“Torch it,” her father orders. “Just torch it–he’s not going to make it and we don’t have another shot.”

He scoops some more muck out of the other man’s throat as he lays him back across the table and starts compressions. While Bird shoves on an oven glove and turns on the burner, Nell has the presence of mind to photograph the pattern on her phone. The leather-cotton mix of the pocket catches with a terrible smell. First it just smolders and Bird has to hold it right in the flame. Slowly the pattern begins to bubble and then seems to sink into the burning fabric. The silicon glove keeps the flames but not the heat away from his fingers. The man starts to cough; his chest rises momentarily, and then stills.

Suddenly Nell yells, “That’s not it though. It’s not just the pocket, it’s the whole thing.”

And she grabs the jacket off the table and runs into the yard with it. Once there is no trace left of the pocket, Bird tears off the glove and turns on the faucet to run cold water over his fingers. Through the kitchen window he can see Nell attempting to bury the jacket under the yarrow bush. Then she goes and gathers some rosemary branches and asphodel leaves from the herb bed and heaps them on top. She gets out her silver knife only she seems to think better of using blood; instead she starts chanting and sketching sigils. It’s always amazing to Bird how elegant and purposeful she looks when she works the empty air. Dusk isn’t far off but it’s still daylight for which Bird feels grateful. He doesn’t want his sister trying to create a ward that powerful once the sun has left the sky.

“Why didn’t you just torch it, too?” he asks when Nell comes back in. She looks drawn, and the mounding of her belly a little more pronounced than usual. He gets her a chair.

“He needs an amulet, right now,” is all she replies. “Green for the heart.” And then she lets herself slump for a moment in the chair. Her father has stopped the compressions. Bird slips out of the kitchen and down the corridor towards his father’s study. He goes to the cabinet in front of the desk and removes a tray of different colored objects. He picks one and hurries back.

There’s an eerie-sounding gasp from the man in the almost total silence that greets him in the doorway on his return. Nell looks up at her brother who comes over to the table and slips the stone on its cord over the man’s head and around his throat. There’s another gasping breath and then another.

“He’s coming back,” his father shouts, a combination of relief, shock and exertion evident in his voice. “Though it wasn’t just the torching, Nell, whatever you got up to out there seemed to do the trick.”

The stranger’s skin is gradually flushing pink as he slowly opens his eyes to peer at the people surrounding him. Sam puts his ear to his chest and tells his children the heart rate is up and getting stronger. Even his hair is taking on color, getting browner and darker by the second. The lines on his face are smoothing out as his blood-flow increases. His lips get fuller. He seems much younger. Even though he is still terribly thin and drawn, it’s as if the light has returned to his eyes; they’re more grey than blue. There’s something about his face that nags at Sam’s attention.

“I know who he reminds me of,” Nell says.

But it’s not a memory Sam is concerned about. It’s the other man’s eyes: they’re expressive; his whole face is expressive. He’s far from plain but not exactly good-looking either; only then again it’s a much more interesting and, he’s forced to admit, appealing face than those categories allow for.

A face with a story, he says to himself. It’s just that part of him of is desperately, grimly certain it’s not one he wants to hear.

Nell gets to her feet and then leans forward to smear some of the holy water across his lips. No blistering, and he is clearly dehydrated. She gets a little bottle out of the pocket in her apron and gives him some tincture of yarrow, just a little spot on his tongue. She tells him sorry when he grimaces. And then she feeds him some of the glass of regular water her brother hands her. He gulps the first glass down and then grabs her hand for more. Bird refills the glass and he knocks that back as well. Sam lifts him from the shoulders and now his head and upper chest are cradled in Sam’s arms, he can almost sit up on the table.

“Good catch on the coin, Bird,” she says then. “And considering there was no way of destroying it in a hurry, your solution was brilliant. I just don’t envy you the retrieval.”

Bird clearly hasn’t considered the inevitable outcome of his heroism.

“Gross,” he mutters.

Their patient manages to sit up on his own. It’s always so amazing, Nell thinks, how rapidly the body seems to recover from a supernatural assault as though life came back with redoubled force in fury at the insult. The mind, however, takes a lot longer and sometimes it doesn’t recover. The man rolls his shoulders and tries to slip off the table and stand but falls over Sam’s feet. But he manages to get up again by himself, although he has to sort of clamber up Sam, which is clearly embarrassing.

“I’m pretty sure the jacket is part of it as well,” Nell explains to Bird. “I just have no idea how I know that or even if I’m right; one of those powerful intuitions you have to obey. Anyway it’s warded. We can have a look at it tomorrow. In the bright light of day.”

“His name’s Gus,” Bird says.

The guy cannot speak. He stares wide-eyed at the two of them and then turns to Sam. The movement makes him aware of the swinging amulet and he lifts it up to look at it. There are bright splashes of dark red scattered across a gleaming dark green bead.

They can just about make out ‘stone?’ in the sounds that come from his lips.

“You’ve suffered an SSA, dude,” Bird says. “You just shoved death back in its box but you’re malnourished, close to collapse and your nervous system’s kind of fried. That’s a bloodstone: for grounding. You know, tying you to the earth for support.”

“SSA?” his father asks.

“It stands for "Sustained supernatural assault", Nell explains.

“How sustained?”

Gus opens his mouth and then gives up in favor of opening his left hand and splaying his fingers, looking at the digits really closely as if he were seeing double and then holds them out to them.

“Five days?” Bird asks as he watches the man reach behind him for the edge of the table and shake his head.

“Muths,” he says as he twists his lips around consonants that refuse to form.

Bird whistles.

“Five months?”

Gus nods. He reels back against the table and Sam pushes a chair towards him. It’s as if he can’t quite work out how to sit in it and then he does and holds his head in his hands.

“Bedda,” he says after a minute or two. “Mush bedda now.”

“Gus...” he goes on to announce after another deep breath or two. “Gus New…new…man. Pleased meet you not really cut it, in the,” he tries to say ‘circumstances’ but gives up, waving his hands.

He’s obviously at a loss even to know where to begin but there’s no mistaking his desire to thank them.

“And why exactly are you here?” Sam asks him.

Nell interrupts to say:

“Absolutely not, Dad. He needs to recover. He’s going to crash soon enough.”

“I am?” Gus says, getting to his feet with a wince. “Guess got take you word frit.” He’s still having real difficulty with speech and has to try several times to say something they understand as: “Only, f’give my…higgerance: howz recov’ry thing work? That’s kind of cru -cru.”

As he abandons trying to say the word "crucial", he falls asleep standing up. Nell steps in and catches him.

“Like that, Gus,” she says, allowing her father to take the weight.

 

Nell motions to Sam and Bird to get him onto the table again. She goes to the sink and fills a basin with warm water. While she gets out some cloths from the cupboard underneath she explains to her father the need to make Gus understand that there are going to be some pretty major after-effects. A combination in his case of the traumatic nature of the treatment itself and to the effect on his system of the sudden removal of the cursed object after such prolonged exposure. The first twenty-fours will be the worst: his health will fluctuate alarmingly; one moment he’ll be fine and the next he’ll have a major crash at the first sign of which he will have to lie down, sleep or rest for at least half an hour mainly so the nervous system can rebalance itself. Not that he will really have any choice about it. Only if he fails to let it happen and she seriously doubts he’ll have the strength to do so after five months and he struggles with the crash, it will severely delay recovery and may damage his health–permanently. He could even die. He’ll need to be watched for forty-eight hours and won’t be able to leave the house during that time.

“Right, and this is our responsibility why?” Sam asks to a shake of his head from Bird.

“Because he came to see you and it must be important seeing as how it nearly killed him.”

Her brother is about to say something but appears to think better of it. And then,

“He reminds me of someone, too, Nell, it’s there at the edge of my mind. But I can’t make it come into focus,” Bird says.

She hands him the basin of warm water and gives her father a cloth–which he promptly puts down. So she starts wiping Gus’ face and then moves to his hands. Bird switches on the overhead light. Reluctantly Sam starts taking off the other man’s stained clothes; he knocks off the trainers and peels off his threadbare socks. He then undoes Gus’ belt and strips off his pants. He motions to Bird and the two of them move up to his chest and remove his shirt and jacket. He gives Bird a long look and his son just nods back at him resignedly as Sam strips off his own tee and adds it to the pile he hands Bird.

“Really hot and lots of detergent,” Sam says. “Please.”

Nell wrings out the cloth and goes back to working gently at the dried blood and puke.

The body on the table shivers even though it’s a warm night. Sam huffs with resignation and leaves the kitchen. He comes back wearing a clean tee and with a blanket in his arms as Nell manages to get the last of the blood off. Bird returns from the laundry a few minutes later holding some of his own pajamas.

“Younger than I thought,” Sam says, as they slip the pajamas on and then cover him with the blanket. “There is something familiar about him.”

“You don’t see it, you really don’t see it?” Nell asks; although it’s clear to her father that she’s not that sure about what she thinks she can see either.

“Oh,” Bird says at last with a sudden smile at the slow dawn of insight, “I can now.” It’s not that Gus really looks like Sam or him for that matter; at least not in any obvious way. It’s more like an echo in his features, a hint of familiarity.  The effect is subtle but present in an almost indefinable way–just enough to nag at your awareness.

“It’s like looking at someone you might have been. He could be kin,” he says.

“I think so, yes,” Nell replies.

Her father shakes his head.

 

*

Dusk has passed, and the lights in the yard have come on. Sam has made them all tea. He’s got a bad feeling about where this is headed, a really bad feeling. His stomach is queasy. He’s on edge, trying to be ready for however the situation develops. He knows he’s going to get really pissed. He’s not sure how he knows that, he just does. The same way he knows he doesn’t want to hear whatever the guy’s got to say. They’re not about to do any cooking, not yet, and Bird dims the lights. He moves behind the chair his sister is sitting in and rests his hands on her shoulders. She relaxes into them and he starts working the muscles of her neck and upper arms. No one says anything and Sam would normally just ease himself into the comforting silence. After a little while Gus wakes up and looks confused. Bird leans across and touches his hand while continuing to work his sister’s neck. Nell tells him in more detail about the jacket and her sense that that was what had been affecting him, and then, struggling with his resentment, Sam explains to him in as soft a voice as he can manage about the after-effects and the recovery time. Gus sits up in a daze.

“Can’t wait,” he says.

“It has to,” Nell insists tiredly.

“No, if you’re right, I could still die...” Gus says. “And then you wouldn’t know.” He eases himself off the table. “Going to be a shock, Professor Campbell.” He speaks in fits and starts. “No way to prepare you. Only apologize in advance.” He tries to clear his throat.

Sam feels rage welling up from deep inside him; he wants to yell get to the fucking point, though on the other hand the sick feeling in his stomach really doesn’t want the man to speak again. Ever.

“My…uh…partner I guess you could say … I need you to come Montana… only you can save him,” Gus says in a rush, as his tongue and lips apparently start working properly again. Then he grins with relief at the sudden return of the ability to speak.

“He’s in a coma at the Billings General Hospital under the name of Dan Campbell,” he blurts. “He’s in the ICU,” he falters, and then has to concentrate so hard, the rest comes out almost frantically: “He’s been in a coma for nearly half a year and I know it’s kind of late in the day but anyway I now think his coma is probably supernatural in origin and in my present condition I don’t seem able to deal with the forces involved–as I think has just been amply demonstrated...”

A terrible silence settles on the room. The really remarkable thing though, Bird realizes as he looks over at his father, is that not one of them is in any doubt who Gus is talking about. And all the same no one can so much as breathe.

“Your brother, I mean,” Gus says, sounding impossibly loud in the sudden hush, “your brother is alive…”

The turmoil inside Sam suddenly has a focus; his rage has gone cold as he motions Bird to stand behind him. As usual the boy ignores him. So he steps slightly in front of his son.

“How long?”Sam asks calmly; Bird doesn’t like that tone. He starts to raise a hand.

“How long... has he been in a coma or how long has he been alive?” Gus looks even more bewildered. “Well, ever since he last died, I guess. I get a bit confused about how often and exactly when that has happened.”

“Twenty fucking years,” Sam yells as he pivots on his left foot, twisting his waist and shoulders round so his right fist can explode in a haymaker into Gus’ jaw. It’s far too quick and far too unpremeditated for his son to intercept even with his extraordinary reflexes. And though Sam is fully committed to the swing, he is shocked at the speed with which the other man moves. Just back from the dead and the guy is fast enough to twist his right upper body round and up while falling away to the left. So the blow glances off his turning shoulder, and he almost evades it. It wasn’t ‘intended’ to kill, not exactly, but the force behind it is deadly and it slides over the meat of his shoulder and into Gus’ cheek, laying him out cold. Bird is there only a fraction of a second later, his body between the two of them, and Sam is instantly calm. His daughter has dropped from her chair and is feeling for Gus’ pulse.

“That could have killed him, Dad,” she says in reproach, fixing her eyes on her father while her hand rests on Gus’ forehead.

“I know. I mean I wasn’t intending to... I just had to stop him speaking,” he replies with a shake of his head. It’s not as if he can’t believe what he has just done. If anything, what surprises him is that he succeeded.

“With immediate effect…” Sam continues without any apparent remorse.

“Well, he’s mostly stunned,” Nell says with one hand wrapped round the back of Gus’ skull. Sam thinks there’s almost something sympathetic in the disapproving look she gives him, “but that’s just cos he reacted so fast. Only it won’t have done him much good.”

“Can I stop protecting him now, Pops?” Bird chooses to ask.

“Yup,” Sam says. “Sorry.” Though he’s not. Lashing out made him feel much better. It won’t last, but he’s going to enjoy the sense of fire in his veins while he can. His nerves have calmed and his stomach feels just fine now.

His daughter keeps looking at him, much more sternly now.

“If what he says is true, Dad, you’re the one who’s going to have to make sure he recovers, you get that right?”

For a moment he feels ashamed–not of the violence–but that his children should have witnessed his lack of control. It’s time for his penance.

“Yeah...I can see that.”

Bird goes up to his father and puts his arms round his shoulders.

“I don’t think he meant it as a joke. He was nervous and got a bit confused, you know.”

“I could tell, but that isn’t why I wanted to shut him up,” Sam replies testily, tucking his bangs behind his ears.

 

*

In the end he leaves Gus’ hands and feet unfettered and moves into the adjoining bathroom. He puts a cold washcloth against his face and holds it there for as long as he can put up with the boredom. The mirror above the sink tells him the bruise from Gus’ punch is shaping up nicely. He roots around in the little cabinet for some arnica. Nada. That means going downstairs to look for some, hopefully without being seen. Then he realizes he’s got to help wash the bastard. He puts the plug in the enormous tub and turns the faucet on, before checking there are towels. Not one.

“I didn’t compare you with your brother or ‘to’ him for that matter,” a newly conscious Gus declares the moment he goes back into the bedroom. Still lying on the bed, his open eyes are locked on Sam. It can only have been twenty minutes, maybe a little more, since he crashed. “I equated you with him,” Gus goes on as Sam huffs. “That’s much, much, oh so much more insulting.” The other man tries to sit up on the bed but fails. Sam ignores him and walks out into the upstairs hallway, hollering “Bird!” only to find his son trudging up the stairs towards him, a pile of bath-towels in his arms.

“The master rang?” the boy asks, pushing past him into the room. Sam grabs his collar to yank him back and steps in front to shield him–from a Gus who is still struggling to get off the bed. He tumbles off the far side onto the floor with a dull thud. Father and son find him lying there on his back staring at the ceiling as though he’d never seen one before.

“Tell me I’m wrong, guys, only up as they say suddenly seems to be down. Besides I think I should point out, Professor Campbell, that there is no conceivable universe in which the concepts ‘precious’ and ‘your brother’ can occur in one and the same sentence,” he says to Sam.

“Hi, Bird, those for me?” he goes on to ask, trying to nod at the towels.

“Ritual washing of the corpse,” the boy replies. Sam pops into the bathroom to turn off the water.

“Preciate it, cos there’s dried puke in my hair and I wouldn’t want to be, you know, ‘interred’ like that... Only there’s no way in hell I’m going in that room,” he points his head at the bathroom, “corpse or not, while he, while your father is... is...”

“Still alive?” Bird asks.

“I cannot believe,” Sam interrupts, “you said I was as much of an asshole as him?”

“Neither of you can ever be bothered to apologize in any genuine and meaningful way and unless the person you’ve harmed, in this case me, accepts your self-pitying justifications as though they were manna falling from heaven, you call him a bitch for refusing to swallow them. Okay– so mixing my metaphors,” Gus says as he finally manages to get to his feet.

“Look, I’m not sorry I hit you the first time,” Sam comes back at him. “I mean I regret it but it was instinctual.” All that earns is a scoff from the other man. “It’s true I could have hurt you and okay I’ll admit you hadn’t actually done anything to deserve it. So far.”

“Fine, forget it,” is all Gus says to that.

Sam laughs nervously. He’s surprised to discover he does feel a trace of shame.

“You’re right. That was one of the most graceless non-apologies I’ve ever come up with. I’ll try and do better.”

Gus clearly can’t be bothered to acknowledge that. He looks round the room rather than stare at Sam. The walls are painted a deep yellow. For a bedroom it’s a little on the bright side, he thinks. But a room you would be happy to wake up in. There are bookshelves between the windows and between their frames and the walls. An elegant grandfather clock whose pendulum must have been stopped looms over an armchair on the left. There are large wooden closets on the wall on the right which also frames the doorway to the bathroom.

Bird interrupts his reverie,

“Look, I’ll be back before you know it, Gus,” and then they can hear him charging down the stairs. “Shout really loudly if he starts torturing you,” he yells back at them.

So now I’m not supposed to hit him? Only he is so going to goad me again, Sam thinks. Despite his condition, there’s a brightness to the other man’s eyes. Fever or an adrenaline junkie? The guy just has to push me, every fucking time. It’s not like I’m not pissed as it is. Though come on, Sam, he feels forced to admit to himself, he didn’t do any goading until you held a knife at his throat and it was just the once.

Gus shivers ever so slightly, from exhaustion Sam would guess more than fear, and then seems to brace himself.

“You gonna crash?” Sam asks, a bit surprised that the irritation he feels is mixed with concern.

But right then Gus catches sight of the drawing in a frame on the bedside table. Three stick figures in colored crayon: a giant holding the hand of a girl if the triangle above the two pins of her legs is a skirt. On the other side of the giant is a smaller figure holding on to his leg. Gus quickly puts his hand over his mouth in what is meant to be a casual gesture but there’s no hiding the sudden grin.

What am I–five? Sam reluctantly asks himself. He’s not getting off on the challenge; he’s not spoiling for a fight. He’s desperate, and exhausted, with nothing left in the tank, and trying to hide it like the soldier he probably is. The fucker’s at his wits’ end. His body and its abilities, which apparently he’s been able to rely on pretty much before, aren’t working right. Most of the time, Sam thinks, rubbing his jaw. Okay, so I’m convinced I feel righteously pissed at him–only it’s pretty obvious who I’m really pissed at. And you don’t shoot the messenger–you never shoot the messenger; that’s a cultural given in every human civilization thought apparently not in Sam’s World. If he heard my threat to torture him, he’s got to be terrified I’m going to try drowning him in the bath now he’s heard the water running. Not going down without a fight, though, that’s the only thing he’s got left.

“It was only when I got you up here after I’d knocked you out I really started worrying about all the implications,” Sam says, not entirely honestly. “And the fact that there was a stranger in the house who maybe posed a danger to my children.”

“Yeah, I get it about the kids, I do,” Gus nods.

“I mean you could be delusional; that’s still the likeliest explanation,” Sam adds.

“I can see that, too. I mean I’m pretty sure I’m not.”

“Only there’s no way I’m going to torture you like that,” Sam goes on, nodding his head at the bathroom. “Really. The being drowned in the bath thing–that’s been done to me, and I don’t think I could do it to another person. I’m sorry if I gave you reason to think I could do that to you.” Though he has to add, “Besides I don’t think you’d survive.”

“Whatever,” Gus says, though Sam can see something unclench in the other man’s shoulders and throat. “So just excruciating pain at the sharp end of some creative knife work then?”

“Something tells me it wouldn’t work and you wouldn’t survive that either–not in your current condition. Sorry to disappoint you but I’m going to have to rule out torture in general–’til you’re better at least.”

Nell sticks her head round the doorway at that; Sam can just tell she’s decided they can’t be left on their own while Bird is wherever he is.

“You’re tempered right, Gus?” she asks him. Gus nods unthinkingly; he’s not sure he should have admitted that though he can’t remember why. The lapse–if that is what it is—troubles him though and he decides not to meet her eyes. This isn’t the first time Sam has been impressed by Nell’s astuteness; it’s just he has no idea what ‘tempered’ means. “You’re right, Dad, he can’t be compelled,” she goes on to say. “You’d just kill him.”

She looks between the two men. They shift uneasily towards one another.

“It was me this time. I hit him,” Gus says.

Nell just shakes her head, making it obvious she could care less. “I’m sure you’re both really enjoying this little bout of post-punch-up camaraderie,” she says after a pause and a sigh. Gus looks both slightly ashamed and outraged as he turns to Sam. To what, defend him? “Only from over here it just seems juvenile,” she adds, raising her voice. “Every bit of exertion like that simply delays your recovery, Gus. In fact, I’ve got no idea how you’re even standing up much less brawling. And it’s irresponsible considering the efforts put into saving your life.”

“I did hit him first,” Sam says quickly when she pauses–the gloves are about to come off and his daughter is definitely pissed, “and I provoked him.”

“No shit,” she sighs. “In any case, it’s late. I’m going to make dinner and you need to get cleaned up. Ah–I hear something clomping up the stairs so I’m guessing my brother will be here to help with that.” She waves at them as she backs away.

 

In the interval before Bird gets back, which appears to get extended as they can hear Nell and him talking outside the room, Sam announces:

“Nell made it very clear to me after she examined you that, because I’d...uh...hit you, your care would have to be my responsibility–for the next forty-eight hours at least. Anyway I am sorry, Gus, really sorry. I’d like to say I really didn’t mean to show you the disrespect you’ve been treated with, except of course I did since I basically pulled a knife on you. Please believe me, though, the last thing I’d ever want would be to behave towards you the way my brother used to behave to me. And I should never have hit you.”

“Thank you,” Gus replies, rather testily or so it seems to Sam. “Maybe I could have handled it better–I’m not too clear about that. And it’s not like I don’t understand what an incredible shock it must have been.” He gives Sam a look then with the corners of his mouth turned down as if to say: I know that is the understatement of all time. “And there”s the whole home invasion thing, your kids, an unwelcome visitor. Only, Professor Campbell, I have to warn you you’ve only seen my bright and cheerful side up to now. The truth is I’m an appalling patient. I hate having to be looked after. It makes me grumpy. Very grumpy.”

“So just like my brother then?”

“Touché,” Gus acknowledges with a sour smile.

 

Sam takes advantage of the sudden truce to pop into the hallway and slip into Bird”s bedroom. He puts in a call to the hospital once he’s sure he can’t be overheard. He eventually gets through to the ICU and persuades the nurse who answers that his brother Gus has been in an accident and needs to know how his friend Dan Campbell is doing. There’s the usual stuff about confidential matters blah blah, but she finally concedes there’s no harm in confirming that the patient remains in a stable condition. And would he give Gus Lorelei’s best wishes for a speedy recovery–she knows him from the long-care ward. Sam tells her he’ll get Gus to contact her the moment he’s feeling up to it. She can’t put him through to the attending, can she? He agrees to call tomorrow and speak to the department head instead. He doesn’t hang up until he’s got confirmation that ‘Dan’ is indeed in a coma and has been there for almost six months. Though he’s about to leave the ICU so he may have to speak to a different part of the hospital; she can’t say when he’s due to move.

Once the call is over he slips back out into the hallway where he manages to enter the bedroom just ahead of his son. Gus is sitting on the bed but is still conscious.

“I’m guessing the bath’s full,” Bird announces as he enters with a confident smile. “So how we going to do this?” he says to Gus, who looks warily at Sam.

Sam shakes his head to say he’s no idea. Bird helps take the pajama top off Gus’ chest and sniffs it. He nods and shakes it out.

“I dunno, pops, all this washing and cleaning... Somehow I thought you know when the day came...it would be less domestic...”

“You don’t have to do all this, Bird. This isn’t on you, you know,” Sam says.

“Nah, we’re good.”

“I could manage on my own, you know, the getting clean thing,” Gus declares.

“Crashes, remember Gus, like suddenly becoming unconscious... and drowning?” Bird explains patiently to him.

Gus nods but he looks over uncertainly at Sam.

“Dad’ll stay in the doorway. He’s got to be there, right? In case you know I can’t get you out of the bath.” They all understand Bird’s more than capable, and it’s really in case Gus attacks his son. “And, I can protect you, you know, from his fits of rage… I just wasn’t expecting the last one, or the one downstairs I mean.”

“I’m really sorry about all the bother, Bird,” Gus says, ‘and of course you too, Professor Campbell...uh...I...Listen, I could go,” he even sounds hopeful in a desperate kind of way. “After I’m clean and maybe with some food inside me. I mean if I knew you were going to come. I could get out of your hair and head back.”

“How?” Bird asks pointedly, though not unkindly.

“I’m sorry?”

“How could you head back?” Sam adds.

“I just need to recharge the truck and I could...”

“Drive?” Sam insists.

“Oh, right, I see.”

“Oh for God’s sake,” Sam says, letting his exasperation show. “Listen to me, Gus,” and then it strikes him how little reassurance he can actually give. “We’ll do the bath thing when you’re stronger and when you feel you can trust me. You need to get clean. I don’t think I can drown you under the shower so that’s what it’s going to be. I’ll need to be next to you because I’m big enough to take your weight if you crash.”

And then the fucker shakes his head; he looks Sam right in the eye: a look Sam understands in his very bones. It says, “I will decide what I am scared of, not you.”

Gus gets up off the bed and moves towards the bathroom. He shucks the pants unselfconsciously and dips a foot into the water and then slides into the tub. Bird hands him the gel and he pours out a dollop into his hands and gets to work on his hair. Sam lingers in the doorway, keeping a close eye on his son. He knows that Bird is technically the better fighter but height and weight still count for something, not to mention experience. Besides, he’s still my baby.

Even worn to skin and bone, Gus is muscled, Sam thinks. More like a dancer, though, or an athlete. The kind of body you get from constant practice. He’s not perfectly proportioned; and he’s marked–from fights with God knows what. And even so, his body looks, well, sort of beautiful, and the way it manages to be so compact and weirdly elegant at the same time is really mysterious. That thought comes to him so completely out of left field, Sam decides the only thing to do is ignore it.

Then Gus says as he keeps scrubbing,

“I saw you at the Roadhouse a very long time ago, Professor Campbell; I was just this small boy looking through a car window and you were only a bit older: fifteen, maybe sixteen, but you’d already started growing. You must have been over six feet tall even then. You were already a hunter. You were with Dean. Anyway you saw me, or I thought you did, and you just smiled this kind of really sad smile...” Gus falls silent.

“There’s a picture in my wallet,” Gus adds, after a pause to dunk his head. “Of your brother and me.”

Bird is working it out for himself, Sam can see. The attempt Gus just made to offer him something. Not the picture, but the memory. A kind of ‘let’s see if we can work our way round to some kind of trust here–I’ll go first.’

Gus asks them to look away as he stands up to wash his private parts. Then he sits back down again to do his feet. Although being clean at last feels fantastic, what he really wants is to get somewhere a lot safer only he’s not going to let Sam see that. Maybe Bird can sense it because he offers him a towel and a hand to help him out of the tub.

Gus dries himself off and slips the pajamas back on and then manages to nod his thanks at Bird while keeping one eye on Sam.

“Dad will stay with you while I check with Nell,” the boy announces as he heads out the bedroom door after looking round to check with Sam, “He won’t hurt you now.”

“Oh and try and get some rest,” he calls back sweetly.

Gus manages to get into the bed on his own and pulls the covers over himself. He closes his eyes, relishing the feeling of being clean. The sheets smell ever so slightly of Sam. It’s his bed. Obviously. He’s pretty sure the other man just told him he wouldn’t be interrogated, not with violence anyway. I mustn’t let any ideas I have about Sam being the ‘good’ Winchester cloud my judgment though; he could rip my throat out. The man is most definitely still capable of extreme violence and of inflicting it. Not that he’s going to give Sam the satisfaction of showing him he’s as alarmed as he feels. Though he knows he’s too exhausted to be alarmed or anxious even–maybe wary, extremely wary, Gus says to himself.

In any case now he’s so comfy, old habits tell him he should rehearse the protective disciplines in which he’s been trained: detachment and withdrawal, self-enclosure. He’s still confused though and not at all confident he remembers how. What he does recall is that the physical pain is never the biggest problem. After all he’s been tortured before, though never by humans.

At some point Sam leaves the room as quietly as he can. Gus is too enclosed by then to pay him any mind, sealing the walls of the house of self–as he’s had to do so many times before, though he should be a lot better at it by now. He’s missing something. He’s missing lots of things. And hitting Sam back was dumb on every level and infantile like Nell said but he just can’t find it in himself to regret it. He has to let the seals down again when Bird comes up to tell him the food is ready or he won’t be able to speak, but the groundwork has been laid. He’s as prepared as he can be. It doesn’t feel like much.

 


	2. Starry-Eyed?

# Chapter Two: Starry-Eyed?

# 2012, Out of Maine and Walking Westwards

 

Once he’d put those gloomy and insect-ridden forests behind him, he found he could sleep out in the fields. Under the stars. The evenings were just warm enough despite the lateness of the year. Or tucked under a tree. Though since he still had no need to eat, maybe his body didn’t feel the cold. In any case that’s what he’d done those first few days as he drifted westward. Slept under the incandescent night sky for a few hours and then tried for some deeper sleep under branches. The stars had made him giddy at first; it felt like he could actually see the galaxy spinning on its axis; like he was falling upward or getting drunk on starlight. If he’d thought about it he would have said it was the effect of all that brightness after so long without it. But he just stayed with the sensations instead. And then after a while the stars would slowly start to recede until he was able to let his breath go into the emptiness between the points of light. And even more slowly all that vastness went back to being what it used to be. An infinite, radiant stillness that soothed something inside him, a source of comfort, or maybe consolation. Just for a moment, as he understood what was happening, he found himself–reluctantly–wondering why that was.

He shook his head. Cold comfort, in any case.

Like there’s another kind?

“Yeah right, that much thinking’s gotta be bad for me,” he muttered with a snort and lay down on his back on the cold dry soil and spread his limbs wide and fell instantly asleep.

Another night, last night in fact, he’d curled up by a rain butt on what turned out to be a deserted farm. He rinsed his tee along with his boxers and his socks in the run-off and hung them over the sides to dry while he slipped his pants and jacket back on and lay down next to the barn on the packed earth. Even the dirt was clean here. The water tasted soft and warm. It went down like a draught of springtime with maybe a hint of plastic from the container, but he knew it was fine.

There are still some pale stars shimmering in the dawn sky when he wakes this morning. For the briefest of moments he allows a memory of his brother gazing upward in awe at the night sky to flash across his mind before he snuffs it out.

He gets a ride almost first thing that takes him right across the state from woods to plains and on through rolling farmland past stands of fruit trees and grazing cattle. He walks through the afternoon and into the next state, keeping to side roads and trusting his sense of direction to take him where he is headed.  The dust of the road has settled around him in a fine layer. While it’s just honest dust, it’d be nice to find a stream or even a pond to wash it off in before he sleeps. But you can’t drink from streams or lakes, not in farming country. And water is what he wants. It isn’t as if he’s thirsty all the time, but when he drinks clean water, and it doesn’t have to be that clean, it makes him feel like he belongs here.

 When he gets to the top of the next rise in the road, a little valley opens up before him. It has a river running through it and perched a little way above on the sloping hillside to the left is what looks like a timber-framed cottage peeking out from a grove of trees. If the river is fast-moving enough, he’ll chance it, he decides; the valley is mostly wooded. He steps off the road and slips down through some smallish oaks and hazels. There are conifers here as well and the scent of resin in the slightly cooler air is soothing and bracing at the same time.

The river turns out to be only two or three yards across but it is deep when he gets to it and moving at a lick: the water is clear and looks cold. He shucks off his clothes under some overhanging branches and steps straight in as quietly as he can.  He slides under the surface and does his best just to lie on the bottom but the current is too strong and the rocks too slippery. So he keeps his head under until he is forced to come up, swirling the water around the inside of his mouth without swallowing it. If anything it tastes like tea. Not supposed to be astringent though. He swims around the next bend and then fights his way back to where he started only he manages to climb out the wrong side. When he shakes his head to scatter the droplets stuck to his hair, he can see his jacket hooked on a branch on the opposite bank. And when he turns his head, he discovers there is little more than a tree or two between him and the side of the house. There are no lights on; no smoke. No sign of a car. No sounds at all apart from the breeze moving through the leaves. He moves as stealthily as possible along the bank looking for a crossing point and finds one twenty yards further up–two large rocks–that stick far enough up into the air not to be impossibly slick. Once he’s got dressed again, he leaves his boots off and renegotiates the stepping stones to get a proper look at the cottage. He holds them by the laces as he walks across a little meadow of grass and daisies. It really is a cottage. He can’t imagine it has more than two or three rooms on each of its stories. There is no deck in front to make it resemble a chalet just some wooden steps that lead up to the front door. The sidings are clapboard and the roof has been shingled with timber. Well made and it must have stood here for a long time. Which makes him wonder. He paces across the front and then round the far side and there it is: a well. With a little roofed frame and a dangling rope. He checks the house again and pulls on the rope. Up comes the bucket. He pours some of the water from the well over his head and then cups his hand into it and drinks a mouthful and then another and another till he can feel it sloshing around his insides. So then he wipes his hand over his mouth and thinks about maybe staying the night here and drinking again from this oasis before he continues on his way. And then for a minute he actually thinks this might be the most peaceful place he’s ever visited and if there is no one here why not stay?

“River’s safe, boy, only the groundwater’s not as clean and pure as you seem to think.”

The voice belongs to a little old lady, who is leaning out of a window on the upper floor.

It’s a long steady look she gives him, and she’s neither as old or as little as he’d first thought.

“Mostly heavy metals though rather than slurry so a bucket or two isn’t going to kill you,” she laughs, “or give you the runs. Still the water in that river’s the best thing for a thirsty soul. I drink a cupful everyday but I filter the stuff from the well, when I can be bothered with it.”

She sighs and takes a deep breath of fresh air, shifts back inside and shuts the window.

He backs away from the well and starts moving across the little meadow heading for the trees when the front door opens and she is standing there just staring at him with a metal bar in each hand. He doesn’t need to be told that one is silver and the other iron. The silver is a tiny ingot but the iron is a crowbar.

“There’s freshwater running in front of my house,” she reminds him. “When you’ve put two and two together, feel free to come in. I’ll be in the kitchen.”

Closer up she seems to be only just entering middle age. Her hair is pure white rather than faded with age and she has large and unusually grey eyes.

The fact he’s in two minds about the invitation surprises him.

“I might be a while,” he calls after her retreating back.

 

He steps into the woods to empty his bladder and is annoyed when a drop or two gets on his boots. He leaves them with his socks tucked inside at the edge of the meadow, and why not call it a lawn, and piles his jacket neatly on top. He’d prefer to have rows of tree-trunks to work off but he’ll make do with the large oak in front of the house and what he thinks is an ash tree that is closer to the river.

Another gust and the freshness in the air is like a smack to the brain; it carries with it a promise of colder times to come. The resin from the pine cones is making the spaces in his head open wide. His feet want to move. His mind provides him with the long-poled short sword and he whirls back and forth between the trunks, twisting his upper body to stab down behind him and then sweeping the blade low across the grass with a flex of his knees and ankles. There’s enough resistance in the grass to stop him slipping. It feels more like a dance than a work out. The rhythm says pivot and he pivots and dips into another sweep that arcs behind him and is so low he almost catches his breath at his own flexibility.   He allows his knees to sag and scythes the blade backwards around his body as he arches his back until he can see the grass behind him. It’s the recovery that’s tricky–he moves his pelvis upwards, gripping his hips in while keeping his back as long as possible and simultaneously opening his chest and then he’s upright. He drops the blade and plucks imaginary daggers from his waistband. He runs forward, lunges and thrusts upwards between the branches; leaves and an acorn or two rain down all around him. He throws the blades into the air and grabs them hilt first  behind his back, then he stabs them into the tree trunk in front of him. Lunge, thrust, step back and he crosses arms and slashes under his armpits and then stabs upwards parallel to his shoulder blades. Some strain there and he spreads his arms as wide as he can, flexing his wrists and forearms back as far as they will go.  The elation is so fierce he knows he will have to bring this to an end or he’ll be here well after nightfall. He puts the daggers back into their sheaths and bends to retrieve the long weapon. He sprints towards the ash, runs up the first yard of the trunk and then somersaults with a decapitating flourish of his sword to regain his feet and then repeats the sequence on the oak trunk opposite. And then again. Thirty or even forty minutes of this and he’s not even winded. He hasn’t broken sweat and his clothes are still clean, more or less. He ambles back to his shoes and jacket and stops to listen to the birdcalls and the hissing of the wind in the upper branches. He’s timed it well, an owl hoots as the light just begins to fade.

He’s not sure now whether he shouldn’t just keep going back through the trees to the road. So he looks back at the house and sees her sitting on the stoop with a glass jug of something a very pale yellow and two tumblers. She pours herself one and sips and smacks her lips at the sharpness of it.

“I don’t know about you but I find the less sugar you add to lemonade the more thirst-quenching it is. Call me old-fashioned,” she says in a voice clear enough to carry.

“Home-made lemonade?” he groans.

“Yup. So if this is the gingerbread house and I’m the wicked witch, does that… mean… I’ve won?” she asks with what’s meant to be a cackle but the lemonade turns it into a splutter. She doesn’t seem the slightest bit embarrassed.

He picks up his boots, tucks the socks into them and grabs the jacket under one arm and steps through the grass to sit beside her on the wooden step. She hands him the tumbler and the jug.

When he’s drunk every last drop of the lemonade which is sharp enough to clear all the dust from his throat, she offers him her hand.

“Minerva,” she says.

“Dan,” he replies without hesitation. After all he’s had time to practice on the walk here. And that happens to be the name on the ID–Ca…no, he can’t actually even think the name right now–the angel hid away for him in Montana when he was god. Social security number, a passport and a driving license–along with five thousand dollars. Buried beneath a tree outside Billings whose location is firmly fixed in his mind. There had never been the right moment to ask him why that particular sum and why that spot?

“Would you like to come in or would you rather sit here a spell?” she asks.

“Kind of unfortunate choice of words,” he says with a weary chuckle. “I’m not sure I shouldn’t be moving on, you know, but I’d like to go on sitting here a while longer if it’s okay with you.”

So they do. Minerva says nothing more and neither does he. She closes her eyes and leans back against the doorframe. He watches dusk fall like it’s the first one he’s ever seen. A bat swoops past, dive-bombing the insects that are rising from the lawn. The river water turns black like a piano lid. He can even hear little plops as the fish rise for their share of the microscopic life. Just before the sun’s light starts to fade, she opens her eyes and making sure he is looking her way takes out a little silver knife from the pocket of her slacks. She opens a tiny cut on her middle finger and dark red blood oozes out.

“I’m not entirely convinced you’re human after that display on my lawn but this is more for your benefit than mine. If you aren’t, you won’t be able to cross the lintel. That’s the safety line.”

He takes the proffered knife and makes a tiny incision on his palm. For the merest fraction of a second he wonders if his blood will be red after all. He dabbles one of his fingers in the drops and says the name.

“You’ve done that a lot,” she says with a rising tone.

“The silver blade and the blood–yeah, times beyond count.”

She undoes her shift and quite unselfconsciously moves up the bottom of her bra cup to show him the tattoo.

“Did you see mine when I was swimming?” he asks.

“These are just human eyes,” she snorts, so he undoes his buttons and opens his shirt to show her his.

“Hunter?” she asks.

He nods.

“And you?”

“No, but I come from a long line of them.”

She reaches behind her and down to lift out a candle tucked beneath the step and lights it with a match. Her hand is steady as a rock. It’s that as much as anything that makes up his mind for him.

“I don’t really believe in safety anymore,” he says wearily, but then with a little more animation: “Taking precautions makes sense but safety’s an illusion; there’s always something that can get past your wards and the really bad things always come at you out of your blind spot. There’s no bigger blind spot than the idea that you can be safe. Sorry to rain on your parade... Only, safe or not, I really would like to sleep between sheets just for one night.”

“I’ve made up the couch already,” she replies.

She gets up smoothly and pushes the door open and steps through into her darkened hallway to turn on the light. As he steps over the lintel, he feels a kind of vibration move from the crown of his head to his toes. It’s not unpleasant. Kind of like the zing you get when tasting holy water.

“Should I have felt that?” he asks her back.

“Like a very faint electric shock?”

“That’s about right.”

“Only if you’re human.”

He shrugs with a sort of half-smile.

The little house is spotless.

As she reaches the staircase she bends down to retrieve a pile of clothes she’d left there.

“My late husband’s,” she explains. “And a bath towel and some gel. Shower stall’s through here,” she points to a small room next to the kitchen. “Oh and there’s a washing machine in there as well so feel free to shove your dirty stuff in the drum–I’ll see to it later. Or not–whatever you like.”

The gel smells of rosemary; it seems to yank the dirt out of his pores. And while the water pressure is far from awesome, the constant stream over his face is blissful. He works a lot of foam between his legs and the crack of his ass and under his balls until he’s squeaky clean–all over, and then remembers to clean his ears, the back of his neck and between his toes. There’s some shampoo hanging from the shower head and this one smells woody. It works out the tangles in his hair that is already getting too long and is much too thick. I must look like a shaggy dog is what he thinks. There used to be a thin layer of protective fat over his muscles but all trace of it seems to have gone like he’s been pared back. The clothes would have been a close fit before but now they’re perfect. Warm and clean and dry. She’s given him a soft brushed cotton shirt and faded jeans and jockeys and brand new fluffy socks along with a lightweight grey hoody.

There’s no saving his old clothes, he realizes, and rolls them up into a ball. He hangs the jacket, which he has no intention of ever being parted from, on a hook in the hall and takes the bundle with him out into the kitchen.

She’s sitting at the table with her back to the window. There’s a whisky bottle, a jug of water and two tumblers in front of her and there’s an old backpack to her left with a couple of bottles beside it.

“Just some more socks and underwear–in case you need them. My husband’s not coming back for any of it and, believe me, he’d have been more than happy for you to take them.”

He mimes throwing his old clothes in the trash with a questioning look.

She laughs. “Fine, it’s under the sink,” she says with a wry smile. And then asks, “How long since you last ate?”

He hesitates at that. Which is a tell all by itself. And then decides he doesn’t care, or maybe even that he wants her to know. That should concern him more, but the feeling of safety and peace in this place seems to be infectious.

“What’s the date?”

She tells him.

“Bit less than a year plus the nearly a week since I’ve been back,” he says matter of factly.

“That’s one hell of a fat farm.”

“You never said a truer word. No calories and constant exercise,” he grins. And then remembers, “I left friends behind.”

She seems to be in two minds whether to ask him about that. He looks round the kitchen while she’s mulling things over. It’s very plain and old-fashioned, not a fitted cupboard in sight. It looks out over the rear yard which he hasn’t really seen and won’t now it’s getting dark. He can make out the shapes of some short trees and bushes. Inside there’s an ancient chrome refrigerator, a small range, two wooden dressers with display shelves, drawers and lower cupboards. Suspended from the ceiling over the range is a rack for drying clothes with some saucepans hanging off it on hooks. There are three plain wooden chairs around the large oak table and a long bench on the side next to the wall.

“There’s a storm due by the way–any time now; or storms, I should say. Though they’re supposed to clear by the early morning. So maybe it’s a good thing you’re under cover after all.”

He nods at that.

“I suppose I’d better check they really are just storms,” she adds absently, seeming suddenly lost in thought.

“You seem comfortable with silence?’ she says when she resurfaces.

“Since the fat farm–yeah. Though I never used to be.”

He decides to ask a question all the same.

“You look even younger now–just a few years older than me. Is this going to go on all evening. You gradually getting younger and younger?”

She gasps and puts her hand to her mouth and then kind of snorts in embarrassment.

“No, this is me or almost–maybe a year or two to go. Anyway I’m thirty-six. I thought the little old lady was a good disguise if you turned out to be a monster and I just forgot that it takes a while to wear off.”

“Why?”

“I suppose I thought if you were a monster and you saw a defenseless little old lady, you wouldn’t expect much resistance and you’d attack straight away and we could get it over with. I mean get you–the monster–over with.”

“Neat.”

Her hair is extraordinarily thick and white; it’s lustrous like a horse’s mane and makes her look... powerful; it’s the only word he can come up with but it’s not quite right. She’s handsome rather than beautiful but there’s something soulful about her, especially with those astonishing grey eyes. Someone you’d want to like you and someone you wouldn’t want to cross.

“My students refer to me as Cruella,” she says, noticing him looking. “I’m not the teacher everyone likes,” she adds.

“But the one they look up to,” he says.

“Maybe, though I don’t think that’s my job.”

She pours him out a measure of whiskey. He sips at it and grimaces.

“Sorry,” he explains, “my reaction took me by surprise. Used to love the stuff.”

She takes his tumbler from him and knocks it back.

“Lucky then that I still do,” she says and pours herself another measure. “Been a long day,” she says with a sigh as a bolt of lightning shivers across the sky in the window. The thunderclap follows almost immediately after and the whole house shakes. He can even feel his chair vibrating against the floor.

She lifts her hand and sketches several glyphs in the air. He can see a trace as though the sketching left something behind. Part of him wants to feel uneasy but he can’t work up the energy, or maybe he just doesn’t feel concerned enough. Then she cocks her head, listening. The next bolt isn’t right overhead; there’s a couple of seconds before the boom comes. She flicks out the little knife from her pocket and cuts her finger, squeezing a drop of blood into her palm and then sketches another sigil through the red liquid. His anxiety does stir at that, only she looks up at him and gasps again.

“It’s just a storm,” she says while obviously gathering her thoughts. “I have to apologize though because the...uh... working that tells me that has also shown me your aura. They’re linked: auras and electromagnetic phenomena–just in case you didn’t know.”

Her words tail off.

“And?” he asks.

“You weren’t at a fat farm. I mean I knew that–obviously. Just as I knew you hadn’t escaped from a psychiatric ward. I’m babbling, I know. Please believe me that it was an accident. I wouldn’t have looked, I promise you.” Then she adds, “Not without your permission.”

“Can’t psychics see them all the time?” but he’s a lot less relaxed than his tone would suggest.

“I believe so, but they learn to turn it off. I have to use lore to see someone’s aura and you have to be close to them; that’s why I didn’t try when you were at the well when it might have been legitimate. It’s a rather serious breach to do so without permission unless you sincerely believe the person is a threat or a real and present danger to others.”

“And you don’t think I am?” he persists.

“I’m sure you’re dangerous but no, I don’t think you pose a threat to me. And I didn’t then, not once I saw you drinking at the well.”

“So what’s the problem?”

She clearly has to give that a think. He says nothing, waiting unusually patiently while watching the rain stream down the kitchen windows. It’s bucketing down so hard now nothing else can be seen. Though part of him is thinking that his chances might actually be better sheltering under a tree somewhere and besides getting soaking wet even feels kind of appealing in a way he can’t quite get his head around.

“Maybe that’s part of why you’re here,” she announces eventually, while taking another sip from her glass. “I should explain–this morning as I was getting ready to leave–I actually live three hours away on the other side of the state in the university town where I teach: I’m a professor of anthropology...”

“Among other things.”

“Among other things, yes. Anyway I woke up knowing that I had to stay and that someone was coming...here. It was very compelling. I’ve never felt anything like that before. Not that intensely.  The really strange thing was I can’t say I felt alarmed, not really. More expectant.”

“ _Chairos_?” he asks.

“Yes,” she says. “That’s it exactly. It felt like the _chairos_ , the time outside time.”

She nods her head at him and then gathers her straight white hair behind her ears before continuing,

“In the old days, what I do, what I am, would have been called a “wise woman” now we say loremeister, although I’m not sure I qualify. I don’t feel either wise or as though I had mastered anything. I study hidden things–that’s my specialty. In a way all lore is hidden, but my “branch” is the meanings that hide behind their concealment. That doesn’t make sense, I know. But it is what it is. I was an archaeologist before I became an anthropologist, a specialist before a generalist. Do you understand what I mean?”

“You used to dig things up?”

“Yup. That’s what I do–it’s what I still do: I dig things up, I dig them out.”

“What’s that got to do with my aura?” he asks with a pained smile.

“It’s got a silver edge, a penumbra like white fire, that is shot through with the main color: an azure so pure it is called celestial blue.”

“And that has a hidden meaning?”

“In one sense, though the meaning is unequivocal: knowing the meaning is what you’d have to dig for. I mean maybe a psychic might understand it intuitively, but it’s not something you can just look up. It’s a very, and I mean very, arcane bit of knowledge.”

“Okay, I get it–you and only you know what it means–but what the fuck does it mean?” he closes his eyes in exasperation and then apologizes.

“It…” she hesitates for an instant and the look she gives him seems to say the question is too simple though she doesn’t sound annoyed when she continues, “… you may know it best from the book of Malachi as the… uh… ‘sign’ of the _ignis conflans_ , the refiner’s fire,” waving  away the need for an apology with a flick of her fingers.

“Oh,” is all he can think to say.

“I need another drink,” she says almost gaily as the storm rages around them again. “Now we know why you’re so thirsty–for water, that is.”

Conversation is impossible for the next ten minutes as thunderheads clash above them and bolts of lightning blast all around them.

“I’ve always loved storms,” she mouths at him.

“Me too–until I found out they could be demonic...” He wants to say “demonic precursors”, but the word is too challenging in the circumstances. She nods anyway. She gets up, tucks some things off the table into the crook of her arm and motions with her eyebrows for him to pick up the water jug and follow her out into the hall. Then she leads him into the living room which runs from the front of the house to the back. She waves him to one of the armchairs and sits in the other one looking out the windows at the storm, putting the whisky bottle and her glass down in front of her. The view is much better here: there are three windows on the outside walls. The temperature has dropped with the change in pressure and she grabs blankets off the couch and hands one to him, wrapping herself in the other one. The chair is amazingly comfy, overstuffed and clearly used to adapting to a human body. There’s a small coffee table beside it covered in papers. Now the blankets have gone he can see the crisp white sheets on the sofabed–the bed part is very wide and just long enough. He’s not tired but he could fall asleep if he wanted, despite all the flashes and bangs. He’s not sure how much he really cares about what she has to say but it’s obvious that she does. His curiosity has been switching on and off like that ever since he got back. There’s no point even trying to talk over the endless racket and he takes a long look around the room.

There’s a sudden and rather brief lull after several minutes have passed.

“It could be that that’s why you’re here. So I can tell you what I know… about what you must have been through,” she shakes her head at that and sounds more focused when she resumes: “In a person’s aura the refiner’s fire is the sign, the unmistakable and indubitable sign, of a purification ritual…the mother of purification rituals… on this the lore is categorical…”

“Refinement...purification... you’ve got the wrong guy. I’m a womanizing drunk who eats with his mouth open–I inhale food like a pig. My sympathy for other people extends only to my immediate family and frankly at the moment not even to him. I’m not introspective, I don’t do ‘feelings’–I don’t really care what other people think of me. I’ve no patience for learning: I can’t even get through the exorcism ritual without looking it up.”

She sighs.

“Do you really imagine I’m talking about your manners? The literal-mindedness of other people never ceases to amaze me and this from you, someone who is no stranger to the fact that there is a world hidden within our own.”

“I said I was a hunter, I never claimed to be anything but a killer. I know the rules, the procedures. But I’m a grunt, you know, not a...guru.”

“I suppose we could play that game: the one where you pretend you’re not my intellectual equal, only we both know it’s not true,” she retorts, and he’s more than a bit taken aback by her sudden snappish tone and her certainty. And then even more surprised when she chuckles and says,

“Though you are alliterative–that was kind of endearing.”

“Are you patronizing me?”

“No, but you are–what you said is just a smoke-screen. A defense.”

“Works for me.”

He looks at her and adds, “And don’t say, ‘Does it?’”

So she says nothing. She doesn’t seem to be put out, more preoccupied with getting him to understand whatever it is she’s trying to convey.

“So if it’s not manners and not ‘feelings’, what is it?” he eventually asks.

She drops the blanket and goes over to the window, unapologetically turning her back on him.

“The ‘thing’ you did on my lawn–and I was spying on you for part of the time from one of the windows in case you are wondering –I think that is part of it... I really don’t believe you could do that before… the fat farm. You practiced your ‘moves’ for more than half an hour: your concentration never seemed to waver but you were entirely at ease with yourself. As though there was no mental effort. You were just perfectly ‘there’. And then there was your speed: that was preternatural. And so was your accuracy. I don’t think I’ve ever actually seen another person demonstrate such complete physical mastery. To most people it would have seemed superhuman,” she pauses so she can turn and look at him before continuing. “So either you have been subjecting yourself to this discipline since you were a child and have attained that kind of mastery over years and years of practice–which would be just about possible. Only I really don’t believe that’s the case at all. Or… it’s something born out of the ritual you must have undergone. You tell me.”

“I’m not sure I get it myself–” he eventually replies, shaking his head. “–it’s just something I have to do, something I’ve wanted, needed to do, since I got back. Like it will keep me here.” He falls silent for a couple of particularly loud lightning bolts and then says more quietly but still clearly, “Every evening just before the light goes. It makes me feel–joy, I guess–it’s the one and only time in my life I’ve ever felt...flawless.”

“And this joy feels fierce and p...” she stops as though realizing she needs to make sure that he knows she really heard what he said.

“Fierce and pure, yes.”

It’s his turn to get up; for want of anything better to do he puts the blanket back on the couch but then picks it up again and returns to the armchair. He has to adjust the coffee table to reclaim his seat and the papers on it slide about. One peeks out from the others so half of it is looking up at him at a slight angle. It looks like it’s been torn from a magazine; one of its white edges is frayed. It’s an oil painting, he’d guess, and shows a woman in a deep red dress that is wrapped round with a blue cloak sitting in a field with two little naked boys. The colors glow and the cloak makes him think of both the ocean and the sky but he can’t decide which it’s more like. There’s a hilltop town in the distance above a lake. He considers whether the picture can have been deliberately positioned to attract his attention but decides he can’t tell. He knows he should at least look at his hostess for permission only the woman in the picture looks so like his mother he can’t help himself. He shifts away the other papers so he can see better. The movement of the air currents tell him she has turned back to look at him.

“You’re thinking of your mother,” Minerva announces without the slightest hesitation.

Though it’s not just that; one of the boys could be him.

It takes a while for her statement to percolate through the confusion he experiences at the uncanny resemblance. And precisely because he feels he can’t look away from the image, he raises his eyes to meet hers. He’s pretty sure he must be an open book but she drops her eyes in response. So he looks back at the painting.

He’s more intrigued though than irritated, and it’s not that much of a stretch after all, so he raises his eyebrows without looking at her directly.

“I can’t explain why I just said that and maybe I shouldn’t have. Even though I knew it for a certainty. Digging things out of ancient documents, records and archives is one thing and it’s not like they have feelings,” she says with a little shrug. If she was going to apologize, she decides not to as she turns her eyes towards the painting. “I used to really dislike that picture when I was younger; it’s heavily symbolic or meant to be. And I used to find the gracefulness, its perfection as an image, really cloying. It’s just that over time I’ve come to realize that you’re free to ignore the religious symbolism and then you can allow yourself to feel its humanity– I mean the way the painter so tenderly embraces the humanity of the figures in that extraordinary landscape. I got it out along with those other papers because I’ll be taking it with me when I leave. I suppose I’d have gotten it framed if it were a better reproduction. As it is…”

Which is telling him nothing so he keeps his eyebrows lifted.

“There is one obvious association though,” she says. “The Madonna of the Meadow was painted over half a millennium ago: the real painting I mean. It seems inconceivable to us now that Raphael could have produced what is one of the greatest achievements of the High Renaissance before he was twenty-three. Though that’s really by the bye. The colors are a little different when you see it on the wall of the museum. Not that I have, but I’m told the blue of her cloak is even bluer. You see, that particular shade of ultramarine is about the closest earthly equivalent to celestial blue. The pigment for it could only be made at the time by grinding up a precious stone called lapis lazuli. It was so fabulously expensive it was more or less reserved for representations of Mary. Though now I’m looking it…the little boy, the Christ child, does look strangely like you… like I imagine you looked at that age, in the face at least,” she adds with a slightly embarrassed laugh to which he snorts, it’s an amiable snort though.

“It’s weird but she really could be my mother,” he says.

“And you lost her when you were a small child?”

“Okay, I get that tact’s not your strong point, but how did you work that out?” though as he says that he feels forced to acknowledge, if only to himself, that it’s never been his either.

“The way you talked about yourself–so dismissively,” she hesitates, “that made me think of someone who’s…” and she’s clearly trying to pick her words, “had to manage most of his life without a mother.”

He nods his head at that, though it’s hard to keep under wraps the irritation he feels at the thought of something sentimental heading his way.

“I’m guessing here, obviously, but since you’re a hunter: a life of duty, responsibility, some dearly bought and hard-won victories and quite a few defeats. And not much joy…if any. Not real joy, not like when you feel flawless…”

Which is less emo than he feared and brings him back to something that is of real concern to him.

“So it…your ritual, I mean, it’s what?...turned me into a superhero?” he asks, looking her full in the face, and though the change of subject is abrupt even by his standards it doesn’t seem to faze her. In any case he finds it even harder to keep his despair at that particular notion out of his voice.

“No, it really is...I don’t believe the refiner’s fire can be wielded over someone in that way. You haven’t been turned into anything. It’s an outcome not part of a purpose. And would have to be unpredictable.  If you strip it of its religious associations, the metaphor...” she looks back at him teasingly, “You can deal with metaphor, right?”

He decides not to say anything to that and just nods.

“The metaphor is of a fire that is so hot it burns out the impurities, burns away the dross, the excess baggage–all the things you don’t need and that stop you becoming you as you really are. It’s just I think that the metaphor has its limitations. We could start lurching into noble and base. Besides, something tells me that what you’ve been through is as far from metaphorical as you can get,” she pauses again, perhaps inviting a response. He’d like her to get to the point but all he can bring himself to do is nod again in acknowledgement, so she goes on, “my understanding and I really mean my intuitions as they relate to these…” she seems to give up looking for the right word and then smiles at him in self-deprecation, “okay, let’s say informed guesswork on my part says it’s about...” she breaks off as if trying to find words he will understand, “focusing your strengths, perhaps.” But then shakes her head at the banality. He can’t think what to say to make her continue but decides not to nod. Let her do the work. “Sometimes that focusing is referred to as ‘purity of intent’,” she eventually goes on, “and, as I hear myself say it, the phrase seems exactly right to me for the thing you experience as flawless. Only what all that leaves out is that the refining process, the smelting, is unbelievably traumatic; the fire is meant to be white hot and that means you get burnt, burnt to the bone, consumed; very few people could have survived such an ordeal. I really don’t think anyone has… before.”

He shakes his head this time.

“I’m not going back.”

“Why would you?”

“No, I don’t mean I’m not going back to that place. I mean I am not going back to being a hunter. I knew that the moment I got out. I can’t turn my back on the supernatural–after all I turned up here, didn’t I? But there is one thing I can change: I won’t hunt again.”

“Yes, I see.”

“I told you I left friends behind and, normally…” he opens his hands, unable or unwilling to explain. Only he needs to tell her, he realizes even if he doesn’t understand why.  “…I mean I’d have to go back; but one of them turned away right at the end. I think he felt he hadn’t paid his dues and the other one, whose plan it was–you know escaping–it wouldn’t let him go. It sucked him back in. He thought that could happen and he made me promise not to go back for him it if that’s how it went down. For his sake and for mine.”

It’s as if she knows better than to say anything to a truth that bitter; she returns to her armchair and takes a little sip of her whisky and then with a little furrowing of her brow as if to acknowledge the seriousness of what he just said she decides to talk about herself for a bit.

“It’s interesting,” she says, “that we should meet now when our trajectories are so different. Though generations of my family were hunters, I’ve never been one. Not a real hunter. But since it seems I can’t have children and now my husband is dead, I’ve decided on a change of course and I’m going to be moving in the fall, to California. There’s a day job for me there as an academic but I’m really going to... be a hunter of a kind. A witchfinder.  I’ve got to empty this place next month and then I won’t be coming back here again...not for a very long time.” She stops and then chuckles. “And one of the very first things I have to do according to my new colleagues is improve my martial arts training. I’ve got to learn to fight and fight dirty. That doesn’t scare me but it doesn’t inspire me either.”

He’s been making a mental note, he supposes, of how well she moves but he takes a moment now to assess her physique. She’s rangy with long limbs but not overly tall.

“You’ve got the right body for combat; I’ve no idea about your mental readiness,” the moment he says it, he thinks that was too blunt. Not to say ungracious. It suddenly occurs to him that maybe he finds her a lot more attractive than he is prepared to admit. In any case, he’s no idea how to soften his words. But she just nods distractedly. The storm crashes back over the house with renewed violence; even the windows shake. He grabs the blanket and wraps it tightly around him, determined to enjoy the coziness while he can. They say nothing more while they gaze at the storm and then,

“What do you know about archetypes?” she asks him. Out of nowhere or so it seems to him.

“Not much,” he responds after a moment. “Why would you ask that?’

It’s her turn to shrug; she hesitates over his denial and then decides to explain,

“Because I’m struggling here… intuition’s all very well but if you try and force it, it goes wrong. Only something came to me just now when you used the word “superhero” and it came very strongly. It made me think of the hero as archetype… And then there’s the painting with all its archetypal figures and that archetypal blue most of all, somehow it felt right. You know, like I was on to something. Besides you’re a hunter… so the hero thing kind of speaks for itself… Unsung it’s true…”

The lightning has stopped and she gets up and moves over to the window frame to undo the small pane at the top to let air in. She stands there letting it wash over her.

“Let me clarify because I don’t want us to fall into the literal-minded trap again,” she goes on after several deep breaths. She lifts her arms slightly away from her body as though wanting to open her lungs more fully.

“That “us” was very kind of you, Cruella.”

“It was, wasn’t it?” she says merrily. “So and stop me if I’m being too simplistic,” she continues, turning towards him for a moment with a little smirk he finds both annoying and endearing. So he smirks back.

“Those labels are of course literalizations. And it’s true they’re an attempt to turn something that is profoundly mysterious and something that cannot be categorized into just that: categories.”

He thinks he can follow that so he nods, not that she is looking at him. Which makes him clear his throat and she must get the signal because she returns to her chair, leaving the little pane open and wraps herself in the blanket once more.

“The closest archetype to the Hero is the Fool, but where the Fool is intellectually excessive, the Hero is excessive in a feeling-toned way. You get that I am not referring to individual people who perform heroic acts, or foolish ones? People are wholes made up of lots of different often conflicting parts. It’s the parts bit I am talking about. The key aspect of the Hero as archetype, and I guess I should explain that this is far from the conventional view, is something that is known… esoterically… as “appetite”: the single-minded pursuit of his (or her) goal goes hand in hand with several forms of excess: gluttony first, sex addiction–and I’m just using that as a shorthand I can’t think of the term: I mean sex for the sake of sex, second, and third, callousness, because his appetite for danger involves a disregard for the suffering of others, what you might call a very high tolerance for collateral damage. Live fast, die young and the devil take the others. The archetype is a very successful model because of the way it manages to marry violence and excessive forms of self-gratification with an absolute goal-directedness. Storming the fortress, overcoming impossible odds, epic feats of bravery and so on.

You do understand, Dan, that I am not talking about individual people, don’t you? I know I said that before but I need you to be clear about that. No one person can ever be reduced to an archetype; but some of the archetypes are thought to operate more strongly in some of us than others. Is that distinction clear to you?”

“I think so,” he mutters aloud, while grumbling “Lecture over?” hopefully so quietly she can’t hear it. Though his brain is working well enough to see that if these archetypes of hers are an attempt to categorize something that can’t be fitted into categories, what the fuck’s the point?

“Yeah, I know but work with me here,” she says as though she somehow heard his thought, that one at least. “Because, like I said before, it’s the patterns we’re after. Of association. The hidden pathways only suggestion can uncover.” She pauses for breath and looks keenly at him before adjusting her blanket over her breasts.

“It’s just,” she finally goes on when she’s sure he’s prepared to listen. “… that Achilles always has a heel. It never ever ends well for the hero. If he survives, he can end up as a boor, a fat, self-pitying braggart perhaps still blessed with a larger than life charm but lost in the dream of youth–think Falstaff!”

“Who?”

She ignores his question apart from the tiniest grimace. Then reconsiders.

“But you do know who Achilles is, right?”

“Greek Myths 101 is compulsory for Hunters,” he assures her. “O thea glaukopis,” the epithet for the grey-eyed goddess is one of the few bits of Ancient Greek he can ever remember despite all of Bobby’s occasional ramblings.

“Touché. But mostly he doesn’t survive: and that is why?”

He sighs.

“I said I don’t do introspection, right?”

She says nothing to that; he can tell she’s going to wait him out. So he pretends he’s interested enough to give this a bit of a think.

“Because he challenges the gods?” he eventually comes up with, though he could have said it straightaway.

“In myths, yes, but more mundanely?”

“Because he has to do it on his own.”

His interest hasn’t really been piqued is what he tells himself but there’s an edge of anxiety to his words he can’t quite suppress as if this is beginning to run away from him. And edge that gets sharper as the words seems to pour out of him: “because he can only rely on himself, because underneath the determination, what you called single-mindedness, there’s… whatdyamacallit… ‘overweening pride’, an inflated sense of his own competence, maybe?”

“We’re almost there–and please, Dan, forgive my tone, it’s an occupational hazard this professoritis–but why does he have that? That inflated sense?”

“Or she?” he feels forced to add.

“Or she,” Minerva nods.

“Because it’s the opposite of how he really sees himself. It’s a…” he casts around briefly for the word, really concerned now at his own desire to protract the conversation. For a moment he even wonders whether she has cast some kind of spell on him, “…a compensation,” he says finally.

 “And all the drinking, the whoring, the feasting, the boasting–not that I am accusing you of any of those, mind, and besides they’re aspects of the archetype and sacred in their way–are about what?”

He doesn’t have to think about the answer. But she stops him.

“I’ve left out one very important aspect of the hero archetype. It’s the one I think you might find hardest to address.”

He just looks blankly at her.

“It’s why the Hero is such a compelling figure: to achieve the goal he or she has to have a unique capacity for self-sacrifice; amidst all the dross, all the greed and the lust, all the excesses of appetite, and despite the violence and the lack of regard for others, the Hero can be truly, well, heroically selfless. You were going to say?”

He says nothing as the minutes pass.

“So you think… it’s my ‘appetites’ have been refined?” he eventually asks as she shifts in her seat, her eyes apparently focused on the scene outside.

“Maybe,” she pauses. “Actually no, I mean yes–in one way–what I really think… and it’s impertinence on my part as is the whole of the lecture I’ve just given you.” She turns round to make sure to catch his eye. “I didn’t mean to do that. It’s not like I don’t know that a hunter’s life is one of constant deprivation. Terror, pain and suffering. On top of which I think you must have been through something I cannot even imagine. Possibly any number of things I cannot even imagine. So if we’re talking overweening pride…”

“I don’t think you’re compensating,” he says brusquely. She starts to smile at him and then cuts it off; it was a generous smile nonetheless.

“You think, and I’m sorry if I’m…uh… literalizing what you just said,” though of course he isn’t, “that it’s what you call the Hero part of me that’s been ‘refined’, purified?” he asks with an urgency that surprises him. And then quickly adds,

“Or what the Hero is compensating for?”

She looks down at the table then before quietly saying, “transcended even, maybe left behind,” though he’s so focused on her words, he can hear every syllable. Only now she avoids his eyes as she goes on, raising her voice a little as though plucking up courage, “though the two things can’t really be separated, as I see it; only it wouldn’t have worked on just one aspect of your… spirit; it’s just that if my intuition is correct then that’s where the purity of your intent… I mean that particular constellation: the hero and its opposite, the thing that is being compensated for, that is where the process has been most focused.” Then she looks back up at him and her eyes might almost be liquid he can’t really tell. “I’m so sorry, Dan, so very sorry.”

“Don’t be,” he responds brusquely. “That was music to my ears.”

She nods, though they both understand that is not why she is sorry. It’s his turn to smile gently back at her. There’s a second or so when he’s forced to consider the possibility that she knows who he is. How else could she see through him so well, see him so clearly?

“I’d say it wasn’t that bad, but it was,” he admits with a little shrug.

She nods and then opens her hands turning the palms outward to him.

“It’s beyond me. Like I said I can’t imagine it. I’m not sure I could and stay sane.”

“But you can feel it…in a way?” he persists.

“I think that what I’ve sensed is… a…,” he’d guess that she stopped herself saying ‘a mystery’. “Maybe we’re still in the _chairos_ …” she adds as she turns to look once more at the raindrops sliding down the window. When she speaks again her words sound as though they are coming from somewhere else, a deeper place perhaps: “No matter what you have been through…it could be you’ll decide you don’t want to change; I imagine your powers of resistance are formidable. Maybe you’ll give up hunting, maybe you won’t. And then again maybe everything you believe about your life will shift, and you will too. Or perhaps whatever else has been changed turns out to be so subtle, so inward, you can ignore it. Even flow with it–like your practice. Without any great change. But if a new road rises to meet you–and everything inside me says it will–in the end it will be up to you, I think, whether you take it.”

It’s her turn to shrug and then she looks back at him again as she continues in a more fervent tone, “You know it has never occurred  to me before, which is maybe why it strikes me so powerfully now, that there can be no joy without freedom; it’s like they’re brother and sister or maybe Siamese twins. You can’t separate them out. This whole time I’ve been thinking that what matters is to find out what brought you here…at this time, this right time… It’s just… whatever I think, it’s just that…what I think–and why that should matter given what you must have been through escapes me.”

She closes her eyes once she’s said that. If she is struggling with something, there is no sign of it on her face. When she opens them again, it’s as though those sudden doubts have passed. As if there’d been a sea change. She looks at him serenely before continuing,

“It’s so obvious when you think about it: that you may be here in a way for me as well, I mean. To teach me something. I’ve felt kind of uncomfortable the whole time I’ve been playing professor as though something was telling me with a kind of nagging insistence that I’d managed to get hold of the wrong end of the stick.”

“The pigment thing was kind of interesting though,” he offers a bit feebly.

She fails to smile at that but keeps looking at him with a gentle kind of appreciation as she tucks her hair back again before continuing,

“Maybe both things are true. In any case if I ask myself what I have learnt these past few hours, like I just did, then I’ve caught a glimpse of the freedom you have managed to discover in the most unlikely of places–and no, I don’t mean the fat farm–I mean in the absolute purity of your intent. Even if that seems beyond me, it gives me hope. And you’ve shown me that joy can survive after unimaginable suffering, or maybe and perhaps more importantly even be born from it. That gives me courage. So thank you and well met, Dan.”

He’s so glad and suddenly so relieved not to be on the receiving end of compassion, he can even summon up a warm smile at her while nodding. He’s not sure exactly what his nod is supposed to tell her. But what impresses him–even as a sudden tear forces itself out of one of her eyes to slide over her cheek and quickly evaporate before reaching her lips–is that whatever she is feeling appears to be offered so respectfully that it comes without any demands. It doesn’t even have to be met; it’s just there.

He doesn’t do admiration anymore; like introspection, it involves handing control to someone else. All the same he finds himself almost admiring her. As if a kind of understanding with someone so clearly different from him were actually possible… maybe a kind of mutual recognition then.

“You know what this place is? What makes it special?” she asks him then with a brave smile.

He nods absently, eventually coming up with:

“I think so. It’s a _locus_ … something or other. Uh…I forget the term.”

“A _locus_ _amoenus_ , a blessed spot. And though you don’t believe in safe places, this is about as close as you could get. The protection, the peace, it offers is another mystery; the Others didn’t make it. It exists only for us. Why or how I don’t know.”

Something must have occurred to her as she says that because she shakes her head and then says almost under her breath a phrase in a language he doesn’t know. One among many, he thinks to himself.

“You care to enlighten me?” he asks gently, not sure he really cares whether she does or not. He may admire her but he’s not entirely willing to drop his guard, not all the way.

“You tell me,” she says with another merry little laugh. “I can’t see the relevance apart from your aura and that is pushing it. Just another of those things that suddenly come back to you. I’d forgotten I knew it in much the same way I’d forgotten how much I loved that painting. It means something like: ‘Beyond the river of fate is the man on fire who guards the way’ though it’s really even more ambiguous than that. And there are those who say it should be ‘bridge’ and not ‘river’. And maybe it refers to the ‘man of fire’. From a language so ancient, a culture so distant, no one can really say.”

It’s not a spell or an invocation and besides it means nothing to him.

It’s when she stops speaking and while he’s still looking at her face and those graceful hands still gesturing her uncertainty that he decides he’s going to tell her about the stars. He’s not so much embarrassed as hesitant at first, as if he wants to get it right but isn’t sure how. And this is despite the fact he’s determined not to be taken in by what she told him, not completely. He knows his story isn’t meant to end well; that’s been proved time after time and over and over again, and the idea of a new beginning is just that: an idea, a fairy tale, no matter all the esoteric mumbo-jumbo. Though now he thinks about it, really thinks about it, the repetitiveness of that notion is beginning to sound like a litany, even to him; it feels stale, boring even. And that bit about a new road got to him; maybe he could go with that. Like she said, it will be up to him. Mostly though it’s that she doesn’t seem to want anything from him, not even for him to agree with her, and so he finds himself confiding in her and even manages a clumsy kind of eloquence. And while he will recall almost the entirety of this evening’s conversation like it only happened yesterday for many, many years to come, it is what she says next he will never quite forget.

“The Sisters…uh, the white witches…” is what she says in reply, “…they say that the thing you feel when you look up at the night sky, at the infinite darkness and the myriad of distant suns, and find yourself embracing that mystery…” she does this little grimace at him to acknowledge that she is repeating almost what she said about the painting, “… and being embraced by it so somehow you feel at home in it, at peace with it… they say that that is our grace at work, our mortal grace, the gift the universe makes to us and to us alone… because we can receive it…” she pauses, and he fills in without a moment’s hesitation:

“And because we die…”

That’s met with another rippling laugh. There’s something really appealing about the way she laughs. Merriment suits her, he decides.

“You’re right …that’s the important bit,” she says in acknowledgement. “… and they say that too.”

They’re both silent for a moment. “Tea?” she suggests. “I thought I’d make some mint tea. And then we should go to bed.”

He actually drinks it, along with another glass of water. They say goodnight. The sheets are so clean and crisp they’re like balm to his skin. The knock on the door doesn’t entirely surprise him. He gets up to let her in and then just goes over to the couch and lifts the upper sheet for her. It’s very gentle and quiet, their coming together. She tastes of mint and honey. And of herself. It really doesn’t lack passion; and if he’s a little surprised by how much he wants her, he’s more astonished by the tenderness he feels. He even manages to kiss her gently on the cheek before losing consciousness. He sleeps until dawn and wakes refreshed and full of hope. It’s such an unfamiliar feeling he doesn’t know what it is at first. He kisses the sleeping woman on the forehead this time, takes the backpack and his new clothes and leaves them on the porch before slowly immersing himself in the chilly waters of the stream. He runs round the meadow to dry off, gets dressed, pulls his boots on, shoulders the backpack and sets off whistling tunelessly through the trees for the road. The water bottles are in the pockets so he doesn’t get round to opening the pack until he’s crossed into the next state the following evening. There’s a piece of paper at the bottom, the painting, wrapped around a thin paperback book and inside the book is a hundred and fifty dollars. The money lasts him all the way to Montana.

 


	3. Befuddled

# Chapter Three:  Befuddled

# Early Fall 2032, California–not far from Stanford

 

 

He is woken by a muffled drumbeat. It could just be heavy rain but then the rhythm changes. Gus can still see the face from the dream he was having; it belonged to the head of neurology at the hospital in Billings. The memory feels even more jarring because he has no idea where he is. Steven Somebody…that was the name of the chief medic, and as he takes in the yellow walls and the grandfather clock, he realizes that this is Sam’s bedroom, his bed even. He tries to go back to sleep, but it comes as no surprise that a conversation that vital insists on replaying itself.

 Although there had been a look of concern on his face, the doctor could barely disguise his irritation at Gus’ obvious inability to focus on the matter at hand.

“Why isn’t he on a heart-lung machine, Professor…uh… Baxter?” Gus found himself asking again.

“That’s one of the more intriguing aspects of your friend’s case. As I have been trying to explain to you. He is only in the ICU because there was a change in his heart-rate last week. According to our records his heart has been beating at an absolutely uniform seventy beats a minute ever since he was brought in and then last week the rate changed to seventy-five but it has gone back to seventy again and he will be removed from the ICU probably in a day or so. Even with the almost total lack of measurable brain activity his breathing appears to be perfectly fine.”

“I see,” Gus replied without much conviction; unclear as to why he was being told this? The doctor was only a little older than him; youthfully trim and nice-looking, fair-haired, very neatly dressed and wearing tortoiseshell half-framed reading glasses. The other man was clearly having to struggle with the impatience he was feeling.

“I confess, Mr…uh…Newman that I feel rather more concerned about you right now and the ‘difficulties’ you seem to be experiencing.”

For a moment Gus cannot even come up with a clichéd response. His mind has wandered off, just not to anywhere useful. And then one comes to him and he mutters distractedly,

“Oh no don’t worry about me I’m just a bit, you know, under the weather. Sorry for being so slow.”

The doctor snorted. Gus was a little taken aback that even thought the man appeared to be disapproving he actually seemed interested in Gus’ wellbeing. They were in the small office usually inhabited by the unit’s head nurse; he’d been escorted there on his arrival by one of the junior nurses with orders to wait for the professor who was still on his rounds. Lorelei entered at that very moment carrying a cup of something hot to judge by the steam. She placed the cup on the desk in front of Gus and whispered, “No sugar”, to him before leaving. She closed the door quietly behind her. Gus looked across the paper-strewn desk at the neurologist.

“I really am going to have to insist on your complete attention: that is coffee—black,” Professor Baxter said rather loudly.

“Is this because he was moved to the ICU?” Gus responded blearily before taking a sip. “I mean no one’s really taken an interest before.” The professor shook his head. Gus suddenly found himself feeling both angry and frustrated instead of semi-comatose only to realize it was because his mind had cleared just enough to take in that something new was happening. The unbroken succession of days he had spent visiting Dean in hospital without any change had only served to numb his weirdly torpid brain even further.

“In a way, yes,” Steven Baxter responded. “The move brought your partner to my attention. So he is my patient now though I am beginning to wonder whether you shouldn’t be under our care as well if what the nurses say is true. You have been losing weight consistently since he was admitted, and they report that your mental alertness has deteriorated. Are you aware of a loss of intellectual acuity? Are you under treatment for depression, Mr Newman?”

No, Gus thought taking a big gulp of coffee. I’m too tired to be depressed. He was still thinking about what the doctor just said about Dean. He knew he should be trying to keep up; it just seemed beyond him. A spark had been lit all the same; his curiosity had been whetted. Just a little but enough to bring him to a state of greater wakefulness than he’d experienced…uh….maybe…for a really long time.

“You mentioned unusual aspects about Dan’s condition?” he spluttered, trying to speak and drink the coffee at the same time and embarrassed by the drops he managed to spatter on the edge of the desk in front of him. He tried to wipe them off surreptitiously with his sleeve but then gave up when all he achieved was a smear on its surface and a damp wrist.

“When he first arrived at the hospital, he was placed in the long-term care facility, carefully monitored but not treated in any way differently to other patients in a similar state. But as time passed it became noticeable that his body was not deteriorating in the manner you would expect; he may have become a little thinner but his body did not seem to waste, his muscles retained their tone. His blood work has remained excellent - there has been  no build up of toxic by-products. He does not suffer from pressure sores. When his heart rate changed he was transferred into my department for us to monitor him more closely.”

Gus could feel his awareness retreating once more; he clenched his fists so hard the ends of his nails cut into his palms. He gave the professor a nod before taking another swig of caffeine–just the dregs were left in the cup. How fitting he thought.

“To return to these anomalies: his more peripheral organs remain astonishingly healthy. I mean that if he were to wake up tomorrow: he would have to be put through a period of physical re-education. Perhaps only a brief one. His eyes would have to adjust to light and it could be a matter of days before he could walk completely unaided. There is no knowing what damage if any has been done to the brain. But his heart, lungs and liver are also surprisingly healthy. There is some scarring to the liver but it is evident that your partner has not been a heavy drinker for a very long time. I’ve just got back his latest blood tests and his immune response is excellent.” He looks through his notes before continuing. “There is a peculiar tattoo in the middle of his chest…uh, let’s come back to that later…we have, however, noticed the extensive external scarring on his back and around his ribs?”

“Dan was…uh… a keen hunter in his youth” Gus said tight-lipped.

“You see, Mr Newman, I am wondering and indeed much of the staff in my department is wondering if there is anything you can tell us that would help explain these anomalies.  It is almost as Dan were in a very deep sleep, a form of suspended animation, just waiting for whatever catalyst that is required to start his brain working again.”

Gus wasn’t sure he had taken all that in. Every mention of Dean’s coma felt like it threatened to drag him over the edge and down into the abyss of sleep. It would be comical if it didn’t make him feel so miserable. And wasn’t suspended animation a better description of his own mental state.

“Maybe you could run through that again; slowly and clearly like you were talking to someone who was intellectually handicapped?” Gus suggested tentatively. The doctor simply peered at him over his rimless eyeglasses. Gus bit the inside of his cheek to stop himself yawning.

“I never asked how he was found?” was the best he could come up with.

The doctor shuffled through the notes and then said, “Apparently he was discovered lying on the highway alongside his vehicle several miles north of the city, completely unharmed but already in a persistent vegetative state.” He went on reading, “There was some blood, hardly noticeable according to the nurse who examined him, on one of his fingers. And a white petal stuck to his upper lip.”

“Uh, doctor, I’m completely at a loss to help you.” Though Gus was actually wondering a bit absently whether it was a rose petal. “Maybe my brain will clear and something will occur to me,” Gus stammered through the fog that had been obscuring his mind ever since he was first told about the accident. Not for the first time he felt like punching himself in the head if only to wake his brain up.

“You said he was hunter?” and there was a peculiar edge to the doctor’s voice. “Did you hunt with him?”

“I fail to see the relevance of that at all,” was Gus’s unexpectedly testy reply. And where did that flash of annoyance come from?

“Indulge me, Mr Newman, please.”

“I didn’t know him then,” Gus added still testily.

“What would you say if I told you that I have a tattoo as well, identical to the one over your partner’s heart and the one you may very well have over yours?” As he was asking his question, the doctor removed a small silver knife along with a small flask from his chest pocket.

“I’d ask you to prove it,” said Gus as he attempted to withdraw his own flask from his hip pocket only to realize it wasn’t there. The doctor moved aside his tie and unbuttoned his shirt to expose his chest. “If you wouldn’t mind, Mr Newman,” he said pointing at Gus’ shirt. Once his was unbuttoned as well, it was clear they had matching tattoos. Out of habit Gus picked up the little knife and made a small incision across his upper arm from which a drop or two of rich red blood welled. The doctor said “in nomine jesu christe” and poured some water from his flask onto the other man’s wound. “Does that formulation work?” Gus asked when nothing happened, “It’s not one I’ve ever used before.”The doctor shrugged and made a matching cut on his arm so Gus could return the favor.

For a moment or two they looked at one another in silence.

“Until I was twenty, you know, it never occurred to me that I could get out, that it was even possible,” the professor continued. “And then my father died, killed on the job, and I walked away, away from all of it. And I never looked back. All that discipline, the training, though, it stood me in good stead in the real world.”

All Gus could manage was a nod. He hadn’t actually said he was a hunter and besides his parents were so it was only a slight deception.

“I said I never looked back but there is a grapevine, you hear things, but that is by the bye, the reason I have told you this, Mr Newman, is not to resurrect old memories–I am not sure that either of us really want to swap horror stories. When I saw Dan’s tattoo, I knew I was dealing with a hunter and I couldn’t help thinking–not at first I grant you–but lately more and more that there is something uncanny going on with my patient.”

Gus was momentarily confused by the word uncanny and then had to translate it,

“Something supernatural, you mean?”

“Perhaps. And that is why I felt it was so important I spoke to you as someone familiar with the patient’s life and his past. I have no idea what experience you have of such matters. I only ever dealt with vampires and werewolves and the odd rougarou. My knowledge of lore is rudimentary.”

“So when you said it was almost as though he was in a deep sleep rather than in a coma... you were thinking?” A marginally more alert Gus responded.

“Sleeping Beauty actually,” Steven Baxter said with a rueful smile. “Whenever I look in on him, I always find myself thinking that he is waiting for someone to wake him up. Like in the fairy-tales...” the doctor explained.

Gus didn’t know what to think. For a moment anyway. And then he leapt out of his chair as a whole battery of warning signals suddenly went off like klaxons in his mind, the discordant tones scything through the miasma to his very core. Though it wasn’t actually obvious who was the more surprised when he suddenly yelled at the doctor, “Oh my God, it’s a curse.” He might be on his last legs but an intuition that compelling had to be heeded. He ran out of the office and then ran straight back in again. “I…I’ll be back…only I’ve got to go to California…right now.” He grabbed Professor Baxter by the hand and shook it enthusiastically before exiting the office and heading down the endless corridors of the hospital towards the exit. There was no air and his heart felt like it was going to explode. He could taste blood in his mouth; he was so desperate to be on his way. He ended up lost at one point between floors and had to retrace his steps and only realized he was heading in the right direction because he could suddenly hear lots of people speaking. He hit the swing doors at full speed and then had to force himself to decelerate as he couldn’t remember where his truck was and anyway everyone was looking at him and they’d be calling security before you knew it. Even though drizzle was falling, the light felt too bright for his tired eyes; he made himself take deep breaths to calm his pounding heart before getting his phone out in the hospital car park. Then he put it away as he had no idea who to call.

 

*

Gus turns over in Sam’s huge bed and hugs the pillow. The drumming has got louder, the rhythmical changes more intricate: whoever is playing is really talented. He would be entranced if he didn’t feel so dedicated to going under again. Mostly because he hasn’t felt this rested for what seems like forever and even more sleep would be guaranteed to make him feel even better physically and mentally. The drumming fades slowly away but then he can hear someone running up the stairs. So it’s no surprise when the boy bursts into the room with a ta-da!

“Was that totally awesome or what?” he asks Gus who is struggling to sit upright.

“What?” comes the disgruntled reply.

“I’d have let you sleep longer but my sister says you’ve got to eat. So I kind of invented an alarm clock for you–a musical one, to make the transition easier.”

Gus is looking at him but seems to be finding it difficult to focus his eyes. He rubs them in confusion and then peers at Bird.

“Why do you sound exactly like I did when I was your age? Do people really still say ‘awesome’?”

“Dude, what can I say?” Bird replies excitedly. “The Oughties are back with a bang I guess.”

Gus shuffles off the edge of the bed and then gets slowly to his feet. The boy hands him a pair of thick socks to put on.

“The drumming was …uh…really …uh…rousing. I can’t thank you enough,” Gus says sourly as he follows Bird out onto the landing. He feels well enough to get down the stairs on his own though the boy stays a step or two in front of him on the way down. When they enter the kitchen, Nell is working at the stove, stirring what smells like a stew in a large casserole on one of the burners. Sam is sitting at the table with the wallet in his hands. He looks up at Gus for permission. Gus nods and Sam gets the photo out.

“That’s me and Dean standing side by side in the image,” Gus explains. “We’d just been redigging the trench around the front of his house; he likes to keep it flooded with running water. We’re both pretty dirty, filthy actually, and I’ve got mud smeared across my forehead but Dean’s face has remained spotless and he’s smiling fit to burst. One of his arms is resting across my shoulders and the other is clutching a long-handled trenching tool, I forget what it’s called - you can make out his house in the background. That was a really good day. It seems like ages ago only it can’t have been more than five years or thereabouts...”

Bird takes the photo from his father and studies it. He nods with a vague smile at Gus as he moves across the room to show it to Nell.

Sam motions to their guest to take a seat. There’s a blue stone on a leather cord set between the cutlery at his place setting. Bird goes over to join his sister at the stove.

“What is your relationship with this person you claim is my brother?” Sam asks in a manner that is maybe aiming for professorial but sounds more than slightly contemptuous. Bird rolls his eyes to heaven.

“Like I said he’s my…uh… partner. But look I’m not the important person here. I need - he needs - your help. I am sorry to harp on about it but there isn’t much time to lose.”

No one reacts. Sam puts the photo back in the wallet but doesn’t return it to Gus. Then he gets up and starts putting out the glasses - they each get a wine and a water glass. He puts a large jug of water on the table and a bottle of wine. Gus tries to get up to help but Bird waves him back into his seat.

“Of course it could be faked, I know that. I just don’t know what to offer you, Professor Campbell, in the way of proof...”

“You should eat,” Nell says, interrupting him, while handing some warm plates to her brother.

“Uh, Nell, sorry, only you’re doing all this for me and I haven’t even thanked you properly, tibi gratias ago, soror,” he says, turning to face her in his seat and making a little bow.

She sighs. She signals something with the fingers of her free hand and then taps them against the arm that Gus can see. Gus taps back against the table.

“So now we all know we’re on the same team,” is all Nell says in answer.

“Nell, it’s just…” Gus begins and they can all hear the urgency in his voice.

“No, really, no,” she responds, she turns to him with an apologetic if exasperated smile and then starts threading her hair away from the pot and into a plait she ties with a rubber band. “I’m having a hard enough time dealing with the fact that my father almost killed you.  If you really want to thank me… then for the rest of the evening I need you to… focus on getting better and that means eating what I’ve cooked and not talking about your mission.”

Gus nods. He doesn’t look abashed, Sam thinks, it’s more like he’s weighing what she said. And he is. Though Gus is also taking the opportunity to fully grasp how remarkable Nell is. He’d been fighting for his life before, and this is the first chance he’s had to take in that the girl who saved him can only be nineteen at most.

“Grief, loss…” Gus suddenly says quietly but very clearly, his grey eyes fixed on Nell. “They put a terrible strain on the soul, especially when you can’t mourn… and you can’t do that, not properly, if there’s still part of you that believes the person you’ve lost isn’t really dead. It stops you accepting the loss… and that means the pain never goes away, not completely, the wound never heals.”

Sam looks up to see his son walk from the stove over to Gus. Bird rests his arm on the back of Gus’ shoulders. Very lightly and just for a moment and then he goes back to the stove, picks up the plates and returns to lay them on the table. So the fucker has even managed to suborn my kids is Sam’s first pretty hateful thought before shame makes him admit to himself that the simple truth is that his kids had understood all along.

And then Gus laughs; it’s just a little laugh but Nell looks over at the sound. There’s no mistaking his delight. She cocks her head at him, a tentative smile on her lips.

“I’m just so glad to be alive - and I’m hungry for the first time in forever. You’ve no idea how good that feels.”

“That was a very generous thing to say, Gus,” Sam says finally and not entirely ungrudgingly. He’s more than a little uncomfortable at being seen so clearly by someone outside the family, and he’s still recovering from the realization that his children appear to know him better than he does himself while also trying not to give in to his antipathy towards this stranger in their midst. “I’m not sure I deserve that much compassion.”

The other man snorts and then looks Sam in the eye with a slightly quizzical grin.

“You did save my life,” Gus says, only Sam gets that that upturning of his lips is also making clear: I’m still glad I punched you back. So he nods and comes up with a weary although almost warm smile of his own.

“Besides, there’s the Cage,” Gus goes on, “… and saving the world…and… tibi gratias ago, professor.”

He turns again in his seat and beams at Bird,

“Thank you, Bird, for everything you’ve done… tibi gratias ago, frater.”

“Was that personal experience talking?” Bird asks him and for a moment Gus can’t work out the context; then he half-smiles and shrugs.

“I don’t honestly know–I think the right answer is yes and no. I lost my family when I was a little kid; I’m not sure how well I’ve grieved for them. Still, that’s maybe a conversation for another day…”

Gus is careful to try and catch Bird’s eye, to make sure he’s okay with that. The boy just smiles in response. The older man is suddenly struck by the thought that he’s not going to be a boy much longer–he is about to be a young adult; that makes him feel a little sad although he can’t see why. It’s as Nell puts a plate in front of him and rests her hand on his very briefly that a window is abruptly thrown open in his mind and he experiences a moment of absolute mental clarity. It only lasts for a second or two. He looks up to see father and son staring at him as though he’d made a noise, as if he’d tried to get their attention. Nell sits next to him while Bird sits opposite next to his father.

The bottle of wine gets opened and Sam pours out a small glass each for him and Bird and a larger one for himself. He looks over at Nell who shakes her head. The table is plain but well made in oak waxed to a beautiful old yellow shine. It looks as old as the house. It’s only on his second mouthful that he becomes aware the stew is delicious. He sips the wine. He turns to Nell and his eyes are sparkling,

“Orange zest in a beef stew?”

“Is that okay?” she asks.

“It’s freaking inspired and the moment I worked it out I thought why had it never occurred to me to do that. It’s kind of my favorite, well I guess venison is, I make stew a lot though and now you’ve given me a new way to...” he falls silent and goes back to eating what’s on the plate and then looks over at the others. “Can I have some more, uh, Professor Campbell?”

“Of course you can have some fucking more. This isn’t Oliver Twist,” Sam snorts. “And for God’s sake call me Sam,” he adds gruffly.

“Gus is my real name; well, it’s short for Augustus. I’ve been called Newman for quite a while now and it almost feels like my real name: to all intents and purposes it is,” he looks over at Nell not sure if he should continue, “I think… I mean… a moment ago my mind cleared just a little...”

Sam sees Bird’s ears prick up though his son continues eating. Gus is running a finger over the blue stone.

“I think I’ve been…uh...‘befuddled’,” he says.

Nell nods, and so does Bird–which Sam finds irritating. But he’s not about to risk his daughter’s wrath by giving the other man any encouragement. Besides, he can ask her what it means later.

“Gus,” Nell says patiently. “Now you’re more grounded, when we’ve finished eating I want you to slip the bloodstone off and place the jade, that’s the blue stone, around your neck. Your mind will clear some more if you sleep with it on.”

“Okay, I mean thank you. Really. I wish…I’m so grateful for all you’ve done.”

He startles them all then by dropping his head in his hands and then lifts it to rub his eyes.

“Crash coming?” Bird asks. He gets out of his seat and steps round the table to rest his hands on Gus’ shoulders.

“Palm to wrist, please, before it does,” Gus announces. He holds out his hand to the right, the palm turned up.  Bird leans forward and places his wrist against Gus’ palm while folding his own around the other man’s wrist.

“What the hell is that?” Sam asks, responding most of all to Nell’s slightly worried look though that turns out to be more to do with Gus’ very obvious struggle to remain conscious.

Their wrists stay clasped for only a second or two before Bird nods.

“All gone; squeaky clean,” the boy declares.

Gus gasps with relief as they let go of each other’s wrists and he slumps forward; his head touches down beside his plate and a second or so later he is quite clearly fast asleep.

“He thinks I’ve got the _an da shealladh_ , the Second Sight,” Bird explains to his father. “Which I don’t, of course,” he smirks. “He wanted me to check he wasn’t, you know, booby-trapped or something. So it was a good call cos he isn’t but he’ll sleep better knowing he’s not been programmed to off us while we sleep, and uh…so will we, I guess. That was really smart; I mean he was wrong about me. Only not wrong to believe I could tell. I’m impressed.”

“I’m not and I don’t like it,” Sam says very firmly.

“Yeah, I can tell that too,” his son replies. “I think I should help you get him upstairs just in case he suffers an unfortunate accident.”

Nell sighs.

Bird gently pulls the bloodstone away from Gus’ throat and takes the pendant off as Nell slips the blue jade over his head and then down around his neck.

“Win-win, right, sis? He didn’t talk about his mission and we’ll all be a bit less in the dark tomorrow?”

She nods and then kisses him.

“I mean I know it’s my job not to be, but sometimes I just have to tell you how proud I am of you,” she says to her brother.

Sam takes that as his cue to lift Gus over his shoulder. He opens the door to the hallway and then stops, turning back he asks,

“Do we still have that baby-minder thing–you know from when Bird was...a baby?”

Nell shakes her head.

Sam sighs.

“You could get the house to monitor him,” Nell says.

“What? You mean it can listen in to my bedroom? Whose idea was that?” Sam asks incredulously.

“It comes with the system package,” Bird explains with exaggerated patience. “House?”

“Yes,” comes the reply in the tenor voice Sam can never get used to.

“Can you function like a baby-monitor in room 8?” Bird asks.

“Yes. But I’m prohibited from doing so.”

“We’d like to suspend the prohibition for 24 hours.”

“I need authorization from all core family members,” it responds.

“Thank God for that,” Sam whispers to Nell, and then “Authorized by me, uh, Samuel Campbell.”

“And by me, Nell Campbell.”

“Oh and by me too, Bird Campbell.”

 

Sam shakes his head and takes Gus up to his bedroom; he’s not that light despite being so thin, and lifting that much muscled human is more of a struggle than Sam cares to admit. He takes extra care not to let him bang his head on the staircase and the landing. He deposits him gently, if a bit breathlessly, on one side of the bed and then pulls the covers over him. The unconscious man manages to snuggle into the pillow by himself. This is ridiculous, Sam thinks, I pulled a knife on him only a couple of hours ago. I truly believed he posed a threat to my kids and now I’m kind of hoping he’ll sleep through the night. He turns on the bedside light and then goes back downstairs again to the kitchen. His children are back sitting at the table.

Bird has clearly helped himself to another glass of wine. Nell has a cup of something steaming in front of her. They all love this room; it’s where they spend most time together.

“To our first adult houseguest,” Bird says raising his glass as his father pours one for himself. Sam pulls over one of the other chairs for Nell to rest her feet on as he sniffs her drink. He grimaces.

“Thanks for dinner, Nell,” he says. She nods with her eyes closed.

“Assuming Gus is telling the truth…” Sam starts.

“He’s telling the truth all right,” Bird says calmly. “It’s just he could be deluded, or I dunno, under the influence of some unknown force... Doesn’t seem likely, though. Or you know that he’d put himself through that. And of course there’s no evidence the person he thinks is the Dead Guy actually is… I’m just going to pop upstairs to check on him. Be right back.”

He vanishes from the room so quickly Sam is forced to consider whether he actually saw him leave.

“I admit I’ve got no direct evidence but I’m pretty much convinced he’s a loremeister; that might seem contradictory given how clueless he seems–it’s just I can sort of ‘feel’ the lore inside him,” Nell announces into the sudden silence.

“So you think ‘questioning’ him would be pointless?” Sam asks Nell.

“I can see why you might want to leave aside the morality of it but since he’s tempered, and admitting that is more or less the same, Dad, as admitting he’s an advanced practitioner, he can’t be compelled, and besides he wouldn’t survive torture...”

“How do you know he wouldn’t survive?”

“The tempering a loremeister has to go through does things to the nervous system,” Nell replies. “Right now his is damaged–it’s not that he can’t recover with a bit of help–but it means he doesn’t have the resilience to meet the demands the tempering would impose on mind and body if you triggered it. He’d just shut down. And he wouldn’t come back.”

 

What Sam is thinking while he listens to his daughter is that no matter how much like his brother she looks, it is his wife’s face he is seeing in hers. Not so much in her features, maybe the shape of her eyes though not their color. More a kind of presence. Because whatever Nell has inherited from his side of the family it seems to be on the surface, all the deeper parts of her come from her mother. Her resoluteness, most of all, and her bravery, and that detachment that makes other people believe she can see things they can’t, or won’t. It strikes him as odd though that her clarity of mind, her decisiveness, also make him think of his brother. Rowan was just as incisive but a bit more prone to lose her cool. Maybe she also felt less secure because there was no way in hell she was ever going to let Nell be that. Sam’s got no great opinion of his own intellect; he’s very, very good at detail and okay so he knows how to construct an argument but the bigger picture not so much and while he’d managed to persuade his brother every now and then of how impressive he found his strategic vision and that ability Dean had to get to the heart of the matter, he’s always suspected that–even if his brother would have ridiculed the notion with characteristic insensitivity–Dean was in some way more intelligent than him, not more intellectual obviously and much less well read , but no matter how much his brother pretended not to appreciate or understand the complexities of the problems they had to tackle, you could never quite get to the bottom of the man, you could never be sure of how much he saw or understood. Just that it was always more than you thought. And then Sam has always believed that of the two of them Dean had the larger soul. He has to struggle though with the idea that Dean maybe had the larger mind because he could think with his feelings as well. He can hear him scoffing at the very notion. Good because he’d much prefer to be irritated, not to say really angry with him, than have to deal with this sudden and maudlin admiration that suddenly seems as preposterous as… what? Had Gus’ punch screwed up his brain? Or did he really feel that he had never been able to show Dean how much he valued him, how highly he thought of him if only because his brother would never let him do that, no matter how hard he tried. He is furious again all of a sudden. Why?

“I can see the steam coming out of your ears, please don’t tell me you’re going to hit him again?” Nell says, snapping him out of his reverie.

“No, I mean I’m not, I think maybe I’m the one I’m really pissed at,” he says looking her in the eye before continuing,

“So ‘enhanced interrogation’ would be murder?” he asks

“You tell me: I thought you had to have the intent to kill. You know the _mens rea_ , for it to be murder? Is knowing that your actions would lead to his death the same thing?”

“I’ll rephrase my question, counselor, would torturing him lead inevitably to his death - in your view?”

“As a less than expert witness, I would still have to give that an unequivocal yes.”

“What about truth-say?”

“If I’m right he could just laugh that off. That’s a very low-order technique. It wouldn’t touch him but any of the other, let’s say higher-level, forms of compulsion would trigger his defenses and you’re back to square one. He snuffs it.”

“So either I decide to trust him or he somehow convinces me I should?”

“It’s all moot really, since it’s been kind of obvious you believed him right from the start.”

“He really could be deluded.”

“No, for all the reasons stated above.”

“Wait, he was cursed, though.”

“That is the only weak point in my argument.”

“Yeah, and it didn’t kill him.”

“It didn’t trigger his wards, no. Curses are really complicated though–not all the effects can be predicted and if you could ward against all of them–the reality is our defenses are far from perfect–and don’t forget this was a cursed object rather than a targeted curse though that doesn’t mean it was necessarily weaker,” Nell pauses and closes her eyes, obviously weighing her words. Then she shakes her head and looks at him with that jade gaze of hers. “In any case if it hadn’t been for us, he’d be dead. You do realize how close he came, don’t you? It’s just I’m, you know, a bit amazed at your lack of sympathy. Impressed as well. He’s gotten to me and I’m a much harder nut to crack than you’ll ever be, pops.”

 “I try,” Sam responds, but she’s giving him one of those long looks that means she’s reassessing. He sighs. It’s no good trying to hide from her the fact that he’s started to have more kindly feelings towards their visitor.

 “Ah, I see,” she says. “Now that is interesting.”

 “The other thing, though is Bird,” she continues after a pause in which she is clearly weighing up the new evidence. If only the Law had any idea what it lost, her father is thinking, when she decided to be an engineer. In the mundane world at least. “He’s more or less bought into the whole thing. I know he’s your baby but my brother’s head is firmly screwed on. And he can see through brick walls, well, not literally but you know what I mean. He could be being played–not supernaturally obviously but psychologically–only have you seen any evidence, I mean any evidence at all that that is what Gus is doing?” Nell asks.

 “No, but that doesn’t mean it’s not what’s going down.”

“It kind of does.”

They’re silent for a minute or two. Then Nell tells him she’d lay odds the first thing Gus will do the next morning is insist on being tested, and more importantly and rather more problematically, he’ll ask Bird to ‘test’ the nature of his intuition that Sam can save Dean. Another silence as Sam attempts to digest what his daughter said. Bird re-enters the kitchen rather more slowly than he left it.

    

“Sleeping like a…baby,” the boy says smugly.

He joins them at the table and looks briefly at his father before downing what’s left in Sam’s glass.

“Your sister has ruled out any form of force in trying to extract more information from our guest,” Sam informs his son.

“Really?” Bird asks, apparently unconcerned.

“Like you’d have let him,” Nell says interrupts rather snarkily.

“Well no, not like torture torture; though I’m not saying the poor guy shouldn’t be ‘creatively’ interrogated... It’s just I’m more concerned about the douche behind all this right now - witch, sorcerer, whatever. It’s all very well this guy turning up and saying Dad can save his brother. I’m cool with that like in the immediate term, it’s just it’s only part of the problem. And probably not the biggest part.”

“He’s got to be a scrollworker; they’re always clueless,” Nell says sniffily.

“How can you tell? I thought you liked him? It sure seemed that way,” Sam says. “Not that it’s always easy telling with you...”

“I do, I really do - Christ, can’t I have a mood swing or two? It’s not like I’m pregnant,” she snarls. Sam gets up and goes over to her and kisses the top of her head. “Anyway I just know.”

“They died in droves to close Hell,” Sam says gently. “And he looked old enough when I first saw him to have been part of that, now I’m not so sure... they are battle mages, right?”

“Only really how do you know he’s a demonologist?” Bird asks, and Sam correctly assumes the question’s actually for Nell. “I mean I can tell he’s got lore but it’s so carefully banked. That’s about it. Oh and he’s a Touch, or as good as, by the way.”

“Run that by me again,” Sam says.   

“He’s more than slightly precognitive and very, very intuitive. That’s part of the…uh… bond he has with me: that’s how he ‘knew’ I could tell. Not your typical scrollworker. Demons, as you may remember, pops, are sick and scary fucks and while they’re not quite the threat they were in your day, scrollworkers, demonologists, or _explicans_ as they are more properly called, tend to have less imaginative and more ‘robust’ psyches. ”

“I couldn’t have put it better myself,” Nell adds with a gently sarcastic smile of approval for her brother.

“Bite me,” Bird replies, lifting one of his feet from below the table to rub hers affectionately.

“And yes, Dad,” he adds, “scrollworkers have to be battle mages.”

“I wouldn’t stand much of a chance against him if he were fighting fit,” Sam says after an interval.

 “You clocked his movement, right, when you uh clocked...him?” Nell gets in.

“More dead than alive and he could still, you know, ‘flow’...” Bird adds.

“Maybe your bro’ trained him,” Bird suggests a moment or so later.

“Ha fucking ha!” Sam snorts. “It’s the way he moves - the speed. The embodied thing; the reverse roundhouse he tried on me - that was almost a thing of beauty, guys,” Sam goes on. From the seriousness of the expression that has suddenly appeared on his son’s face, he is aware that Bird is giving extra weight to something he just said.

“I’m...uh… revising my opinion of Gus’s martial skills,’ Bird declares. His son looks much older whenever he is absorbed in that almost trance like state of reflection he can enter. Sam knows it is the product of his training, the intense training in martial arts both he and his sister have undergone, but it makes him seem so adult. Even his voice will sound more mature.

“You’re growing up too fast,” Sam didn’t actually mean to say it; it just got the better of him but Bird waves his words away.

“Okay so it is unlikely the Dead Guy trained him unless there is something about your brother we do not know or have yet to learn,” Bird says. “Then there is Gus’ extraordinary resilience: he should be long dead but has actually survived an SSA for five months. I had no idea that was possible.” He goes on, “Factoring out her current condition my sister is marginally more proficient than me, even with the unusual speed of my reflexes, let’s say she’s at 7.5 to 8 where 10 is my nominal best—when I’ve filled out and am taller and heavier with greater stamina—and that I am at 7 to 7.5 right now with you, pops, hovering around 6 to 6.5,” he pauses maybe for further reflection, leaving both Nell and Sam intently focused on his next words. The pause gets longer. And then Nell intervenes to say that she doesn’t entirely agree and that Bird’s extraordinary speed of response would already give him an edge over her. She would reverse their ratings. Bird nods at that, “we haven’t been able to spar for a long time and you may be right, okay you probably are.  Anyway back to Gus: fully fit, he’d be completely off the scale. I can’t quite process the extent of that.  As it is, if he is back to 20%–which I doubt at the moment–he would still be a moderately dangerous opponent for any of us.”

With that he stops talking but extends a finger at his father.

“What?” Sam asks.

“He means us no harm.”

“If you only knew how often Dean and I said the same thing, though it was mostly me, only to get our asses handed to us,” Sam replies. “Over and over again.”

Nell shifts in her chair, takes a sip of her drink and then smiles at her father.

“He’s not saying we shouldn’t be cautious, Dad. He’s just giving you his assessment; and for what it’s worth, I agree with him.”

Sam shakes his head ruefully and then smiles at his children.

“I am listening to you. Both of you. I guess I’ll have to take it under advisement,” he pauses briefly and then goes on, “Even so, he’s got the cultured academic thing down as well, like an ivory-tower loremeister. You really think he is one, Nell?”

“I can’t say, not a hundred per cent; like Bird says: his lore’s carefully banked. But that in itself... if I had to put money on it, or more to the point your life, Dad, then I’d say yes. I can’t really put him together,” Nell continues. “I can tell you though that he’s an almost perfect balance of earth and air, or would be if he wasn’t so debilitated, which is not what the birth date on his ID says.”

No one says anything for a while and then,

“Though that’s an honorable tradition in our family,” Sam says. “A fake ID, and he told us Newman wasn’t his real name, even if I got the feeling he could hardly remember what the real one was.

The hospital checks out. But I don’t think I should go in there without him–it’s his home turf, I guess. Assuming we feel I can trust him, that is. And he obviously needs to recover a bit before we make the trek. He’s going to try and pressure me into leaving tomorrow. And concerned as I am about Dean, I won’t be doing my brother any favors going in without a plan. If he’s not at death’s door, then what’s to be gained by just rushing in?” Sam says, impressed by his own hard-headedness. Having kids helps, he tells himself.

“Gus won’t be well enough. The day after is the first possible day,” Nell observes, rubbing her feet together and sipping her brew.

“You going to drive there? If you go, that is?” Bird asks; Nell chooses that moment to give her brother one of her long looks. Sam can’t help being aware something has passed between them; apart from that he’s clueless, as usual. He has to stop himself sighing from frustration. A small part of him wishes they weren’t so independent; that they needed him more. He’s only too aware of how foolish that is. After all, I might not come back, he thinks, and the only thing that matters is they would be able to survive.

“It’ll give me a chance to get to know him and find out about his relationship with my brother. Maybe he’ll even spill about what Dean has been doing for the last twenty years.”

“You’re going to work him? That’s low, Dad,” Bird says. “In the circumstances though I have to say I approve.”

“We’re a long way off deciding the guy in the coma really is Dean or that I should go up there.” Sam says cautiously.

“Right,” is all Bird says.

 

***

The Day Before, Billings, Montana

 

The one thing that is crystal clear to Gus as he pockets his phone is that he has to recharge the truck. And do it quickly which means finding somewhere with a supercharger. He suspects he doesn’t have long before his mind goes dull again. And just how is he going to find Dean’s brother when he doesn’t know where he lives? How’s he supposed to convince him?

 

Then it occurs to him that there is a very useful way of killing two birds with one stone that is readily to hand. There’s a salvage yard and a good one on the outskirts of the city in the direction of Dean’s house He’s never been a car person, never cared really. Only there’s something about a salvage yard in the rain Gus has always found weirdly compelling. They’re one of the first places he heads for when he needs to have a proper think, when he has got to come up with something. The rust, the weeds, the sad rotting metal carcasses settle the waywardness of his mind and stimulate his imagination at the same time. He’s never been able to work out why, or why it works better in the rain. It’s still early afternoon as he finds himself driving towards the place. He’s a familiar figure to the men who run it and he’s fairly confident they’ll let him charge the truck and leave him in peace. The dark gray sky promises more rain to come. Montana’s turning into the Pacific Northwest, he reminds himself, what was a semi-arid climate seems to be getting wetter and wetter. In any case the weather is perfect for his purposes and it’s a good thing he likes rain. Kind of.

The yard backs onto a wasteland of ditches and coniferous scrub, almost no housing but some run-down light industry. He turns into the side road and drives up to the office. First he grabs his slicker from behind the driver’s seat and then he pops his head inside to ask if it’s okay to park it there and plug it in. The guys just give him a friendly nod and wave him on.

Once he’s connected the two leads up, he tosses a coin, catches it and looks. So he heads west into the junked cars. He has to twist between three abandoned hulks, though it’s more like six or seven seeing as how there are one or two even rustier wrecks piled on top of the ones beneath. The ground under his feet is littered with broken glass and pieces of metal, nuts, bolts, flakes of rusted bodywork. Not that that can stop the odd little bush of rose bay willow herb pushing out of the cracked cement, sometimes even finding its way through a car roof. He pulls the hood of his parka more tightly round his neck. Icy drips are not good for contemplation or daydreaming for that matter. He runs one hand negligently along a lime-green hood with odd splashes of what can only be bright purple paint and then ducks under a car door opening out to the side eight feet up in the air and finds his way into a little clearing among the abandoned vehicles. It’s surrounded by cars piled two or more high and in it is just a car seat nothing else. Brown leatherette, bursting in places, but it looks comfy and he decides this is it.

So he’s sitting there in the rain doing his best not to think about anything at all. He does his thing of trying to tune into the sound of the drops striking the metal. But he’s too anxious about the immediate future to really succeed when all of a sudden the image of Murph pops into his head. For the first time in forever. He can’t help a huge smile at the mental image. He could have looked him up, he thinks; then again, they haven’t really spoken since that last evening in Montana before he went West. A quarter of a century ago. A couple of brief letters and a quick phone call if he remembers right. Still, as partings go, theirs had been a good one. For all Gus knows, he could still be in Oregon which is only a few hours away. And maybe it’s the sheer strain of the situation with Sam and Dean, but he’s overwhelmed for a moment by a tide of feeling. For himself at twenty and for Murph; it passes quickly and though it feels sad in one way, he finds himself moved at rediscovering the affection that had existed between them, moved and steadied almost, as though his resolve had been strengthened by that thought. I should remember him more often, he thinks, though people who don’t think they have a future tend not to dwell on the past.  Only then it strikes him that he has actually survived rather longer than he expected and while the memories of passion tend to fade, he can recall almost exactly both the passion and the unexpected tenderness the other man had shown him.

Right then, Murph, how can I save Dean? he asks himself in silence.

Which is kind of like praying to an angel and not something he ever does. He always put these questions to himself. Besides angels are arbitrary in their attendance, think of… and, for the life of him, he can’t remember the name of Dean’s angel. He can hear the guys from the office coming out for a chat and a smoke.

Only there aren’t any pearls of wisdom when he replays in his mind Murph’s words on that day in the woods, the day he became a loremeister; he reviews other conversations he had with him as well and is a little surprised that he can clearly recall the other man’s voice; just a touch of hillbilly with gravel thrown in and something hoarse like peat smoke.

I should get back, he thinks a bit dejectedly, and of course it’s as he resigns himself to returning ‘empty-handed’ that he gets it.

“I just did it, didn’t I, Murph?” he mutters to himself before shaking off as much as the rain as he can from the parka. “In the end there wasn’t much choice,” he adds. “Maybe there never is.”

He stands up and moves away from the leatherette bench  with a new bounce in his step, smacks the lime-green hood on his way out and yells “Never fails!” at the salvage yard and the rain-laden sky.

 

Gus immediately drives to the showroom and parks behind it, relieved to find there is no one in the office. He opens the safe and removes the copy of the will he guessed would be inside–a document neither he nor Dean has ever seen since it contains information about Sam, Dean’s heir–information Dean would never trust himself to have lying around. He enters the last known address which has been inserted in Karen’s characteristically angular handwriting into his phone. Then he writes a brief note for Pete, Karen’s husband and Dean’s manager, to say he has been in the office and what he has done and why (sort of, without mentioning the supernatural) and to ask Karen to please arrange for someone to clean the upstairs apartment (and to bill the cleaning to Gus), the one above the showroom, because Dean’s brother may need somewhere to stay near the hospital. He adds that he will be in touch as soon as he can.

The reason the apartment will need cleaning is that Gus has been staying there a lot, mostly while half asleep, which is why the place is a mess. Having relocked the safe, he runs up the stairs at the back of the building and opens the door; grabs a few clothes, his instrument case and ID and then makes his way down to the truck again. It takes him just under two hours to reach the interstate and then he only has a half-hour wait before he gets a berth on a superconvoy. He doesn’t bother to get out of the truck to stretch his legs but falls asleep in the cab. The berth is only good until the road merges with the I-80W at Wells in the wee small hours which means when his truck is ejected he’s still got a good 500 miles to drive under his own steam. He inhales coffee at a roadside stall and then hangs on to the steering wheel like grim death and simply refuses to let his eyes close the whole way. It turns out to be the most grueling thing he has ever done and far and away the worst road trip of his life. He is more than slightly astonished by the fact that he makes it… and by the realization that once he had the address he could just have called…

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> tibi gratias ago is one way of saying thank you in Latin; frater is the Latin for brother and soror means sister


	4. I'm a Mechanic

**Chapter Four: I’m A Mechanic**

**Early 2032, Billings Montana**

He had history with Beatrix. They’d met at a faculty party. A party the Dean had insisted they both attend. Dan even shaved off his stubble and put on a suit. They were both wallflowers; she was new and he had no interest in making conversation with staff from the department as all technical talk was banned. She stood against one wall looking nervous and holding tightly to her wineglass, not daring to even sip it. So he introduced himself and she immediately pointed out her husband in the melee, a tall, pale man who worked in the Dean’s office. He raised his hands then to signal he was no danger. And she laughed, saying she was usually a bit more subtle and sorry her nerves were getting the better of her. When he asked why, she explained that she worked as a student counsellor and at the end of the day needed to get away from the workplace really badly to recharge. But her husband was keen to make a good impression, and the Dean had told him he was keen to meet his wife. Not that the Dean had even made an appearance. She was an elegant woman and elegantly dressed, with wide grey eyes and full lips. He asked her if English was her native tongue and she shook her head and asked him to guess. He was very far from sure because what accent she had was very faint. He thought about the sentences he’d heard her produce and then he had it.

“I’d say French, but I suppose what I really think is you’re Quebecoise,” he said with an inquisitive grin, his eyebrows raised.

“Born and bred in Montreal,” she replied. “Though I shouldn’t be surprised, I’d heard that the Ogre was the go-to philologist around here.”

“Philologists tend to have a wider... repertoire than I do. I’m limited to a few of the Romance-based languages and besides I’m not really an academic you know. Not much of an intellectual in fact, and not introspective by nature, as you might expect of an ogre. And appearances to the contrary I’m not on faculty, not faculty proper anyway,  I’m actually a mechanic…”

She shook her head but then something about his manner made her ask.

“Seriously?”

He smiled and nodded, and then whispered to her that that was the secret of his success–in the department. The fact that he ran a used car business.

“I kind of grew up surrounded by Latin so that was an advantage. But being a mechanic turned out to be the biggest help. I found out that the way I visualise the parts of an engine fitting together, which sort of comes naturally to me–what you might call an aptitude, could be applied to complex Latin texts. Seeing how the parts of a sentence fit together uses exactly the same kind of aptitude though it used to demand a bit more application on my part,” he explained.

“Only what about your research, I’d heard that the Dean is very keen to publish your thesis?” she went on.

“Nerdy stuff. Details. Mostly Church Latin. Very little intellectual content. Nothing to suggest a mind labouring in an ivory tower. Though I’d have to admit the nerdy thing surprised me. It’s more that I’m interested in certain kinds of detail, I suppose, the same way I’m interested in learning how to fine-tune an automobile. You’d be astonished how much work goes into that; the focus and attention you have to bring to bear.”

“I think I understand,” she said, “only aptitudes are supposed to be very difficult to transfer.”

He shrugged, “Higher math is still a mystery to me.”

“So where were you born?” she asked, graciously changing the subject.

And before Dan knew it they were talking about their families. She’d lost her mother when very young and he told her about his own dying when he was four, though skipping some of the gorier details. There was a gap in the conversation then as her husband came up to be introduced. And Dan had to explain that he was summer school only and not faculty proper. The guy lost interest at that point and made a beeline for the newly arrived dean. She grimaced at him in apology and asked if he had any siblings. Maybe it was because she seemed socially at a loss or because he was beginning to get annoyed at having to be here and didn’t want to take it out on her, but he told her about his younger brother and about having to look after him as a baby.

“And you were, what, four years old?” she said. “But Dan, a four-year-old is like a baby on legs? How could anyone expect you to do that?”

He had no idea how to respond and muttered something about how they’d gotten by.

“What about your Dad?”

“A drunk, neglectful, demanding and my hero, I suppose.”

She just looked at him.

“You mean you had to become a parent when you were little more than a baby yourself?”

“Pretty much,” he smiled warmly at her concern, touched despite himself.

She just shook her head, clearly appalled. Then she burst into tears and hurried out of the room. Of course everyone looked at him. The head of department made a little moue of disappointment before returning to his conversation with the Dean.

The husband started to come over but Dan just pointed to the door she had rushed out. Only before he could make a move, she came back into the reception, a confident smile on her face. She strode over to Dan and patted him on the shoulder with a laugh. Out of the corner of her mouth, she said, “I may have ruined my rep as a therapist with you, but would you be very kind and help me cover up my professional flaws as far as the rest of them are concerned?”

“Sure, I mean it would be a pleasure,” he whispered. “We should just brazen it out, you know. Let’s go and ‘chat’ with the Dean. Do that laugh again if you can.” And she did as she tucked her arm inside his and they waltzed over to be greeted by inquisitive smiles. He was as charming as he could manage in the circumstances, which was a lot more than he’d ever been at one of these things before. He felt he owed her. He even let the department head do his spiel about how keen they were for him to teach their undergrads and was he ever going to allow them at last to publish his thesis. He said no, of course, but took pains to do so politely as though he felt some sympathy for the poor man.

As he walked out with Beatrix and her husband when the event wound down, he said to her, “It’s not like you were on the clock, okay? I assumed I was talking to a human being. Seems to me that’s a pretty fundamental requirement for a good therapist.”

“Thank you, Dan. For getting me through that. You were very kind and you failed totally to live up to your reputation.”

And though he’d seen her again around the campus and even at another of those dreadful receptions, they’d just smiled at one another–not without warmth but with a certain reserve.

 

It wasn’t as if he hadn’t rolled out the mechanic spiel before. At some point, he’d bring out a variant of it with each new group of students. Because it was the only thing he could really teach them. How to apply themselves, where they should focus their attention. Though it wasn’t the whole story: there was the library he’d rescued and restored, and Micah insisting his brain was too good to let go to waste and he’d had to replace hunting with something–if not the danger then the detective work at least.

 

A couple of months later and he was about to start teaching a special course, a fortnight of advanced remedial classes, when he thought of Beatrix again. He’d had an exhausting day at the shop, working through the accounts and trying to sell a converted late model Chevy no one wanted to buy. By the time he got home he thought he remembered Gus was due back that evening and made him something to eat, though he never showed. For which he was kind of grateful, he was too tired to deal with his own sullen silence which is all he could come up with these days. He spent an hour or two instead up in what used to be Micah’s study and was now mostly filled with boxes of the possessions Dan couldn’t bear to give away. It also housed the shoe box that contained all of his own memorabilia, tucked away at the back of a cupboard. He could never quite remember where he’d put it. This time it only took about twenty minutes to find. Inside was a lock of his mother’s hair and underneath it a photo of his brother. He glanced at the image for a second or two and then just held it loosely in one hand, one finger absently stroking the curling edges while his mind went elsewhere. It always hurt less than he expected; it was the shock of recognition that was hard and that lingered inside him for several days afterwards. As if he’d seen him only yesterday or the day before. As if there were no distance–as if it hadn’t been twenty years.  Mostly though he doesn’t think; like he’d said, introspection wasn’t his thing; he just wanders down memory lane instead. When he was done he put the photo back in the box and then the box back in the cupboard, trying not to remember where. Even if his days will be troubled for the next week or so, he’ll sleep like a baby.

 

“Seriously,” he begins, on the third morning of the two-week series of classes he is giving before the spring semester really gets under way, “who wouldn’t want to start their day with a bit of Cicero?”

The huddled masses huddle even more. There’s a really tall guy in the third row who joined the course a day late; this is only his second appearance and he must be convinced the professor will pick on him because somehow he has managed to contort his back and twist his entire upper body so his head is on a level with the other students in his row. He ends up looking like someone trying to hide.

“So, shrinking sasquatch, _Cuiusvis hominis est errare_ ,” he points to the chalkboard behind him, _“nullius nisi insipientis in errore persevere_.”

“It’s Jack, uh, Dan...and...” the young man falls silent. It never fails to bring a smile to his face that his students unfailingly know who his questions are directed at. It’s a gift.

“Am I supposed to tell you what it means, or just guess?”

“Class?”

“Pattern recognition,” they thunder back at him.

“What I want from you, Jack,” he falls silent for a second or two and turns to gaze out the long windows on his left, “and I know you’re new so...Class?”

“No allowances will be made,” they answer by rote.

“Is just to tell me what patterns you can identify–if any.”

“Okay,” the young man says hesitantly. “Starting with the simple ones: ending–is, in _cuiusvis_ , _hominis_ and _insipientis_. And _errare_ and _persevere_ go together too.”

“Good and full marks for avoiding grammatical terms,” Dan says, looking pleased.

“Another pattern?” he goes on.

“I dunno if it’s a pattern exactly but _cuiusvis_ and _hominis_ are one side of the comma with _insipientis_ on the other and the same applies to _errare_ and _persevere_.”

“Excellent.”

The young man heaves a huge sigh of relief.

“And how do you interpret that?”

“Like an opposition? A contrast.”

“Good, and by the way...no, let’s keep that for later.”

He turns to face the class as a whole,

“You know how I love to make life easier for all of you, so you won’t be surprised that I’ve chosen this sentence precisely because the words it contains can be easily recognised or guessed.”

The entire class groans as one.

“You got it. No dictionaries. No general discussion. But I will allow a debate about the meaning of ‘ _insipientis’_ which is, I assure you, almost entirely guessable. Before we begin guessing, what is our first principle?”

No one replies.

“Class? No, wait, new guy?”

“Uh, looking for familiar or unfamiliar patterns?”

“Right. You can lead the debate. Up here, please.”

“Uh, just before we start: the ‘is’-ending you identified, Jack, are you certain that it governs all three words in the same way?”

“No.”’

“Okay–well it does. I’ll give you that, class, as a little present.”

“Thanks, Dan,” the class choruses.

“Oh and Jack you are allowed to use grammatical terms in this debate.”

“So, uh, _insipientis_ , the thing I can see first off is that the basic form must be _insipiens_ and that can only be a present participle which means it behaves like… a third declension adjective, and...”

“Okay, let’s stick with ‘ _insipiens’_ for now.” Dan interrupts.

“Uh prefix ‘in’ which can be a negative or a... an intensifier, I guess sorry no idea about the correct term, but anyway mostly it’s a negative, I think. So the root verb should be?” and Jack looks tentatively at the class asking for confirmation,

“ _Sipere_ ” they say in unison.

“I’ve never come across that so I’m guessing it’s been like altered in some way?”

Dan nods.

“Try vowel substitution maybe,” a girl calls from the back.

‘Shouldn’t we try and think of similar words in English first?’ asks another girl.

One of the boys in the front row leaps to his feet with “Insipid”.

‘Yeah, and like that can’t have come naturally to you, Steve,’ the first girl yells.

‘And insipid means?’ Jack remembers to ask in his new role.          

Steve blushes and says, ‘Lacking taste or flavour.’

His neighbour in the row giggles but stifles it immediately at a glare from Dan.

‘Who speaks Spanish here?’ Dan asks.

Four hands go up.

“Okay, you’re gonna help us out a bit later. Insipid is actually likely to take us down the wrong road here. Good try, though,” he looks over at Jack, who then asks him.

“So vowel substitution before we substitute consonants?”

Dan nods.

Jack looks at the class and hears,

“ _Sepere_ , _sopere_ , _supere_ ” and even “ _soupere_ ”.

“Duh, how come I didn’t think of that first: _sapere_. Nah, can’t be that easy,” Jack blurts out.

“Bingo!”Dan says.

“ _Insapiens_ –not knowing,” says Jack triumphantly.

“Or?” says Dan looking at the Spanish speakers, who look back blankly at him. And then one of them, the youngest boy, Enrique, lights up.

“ _Saber_ means to know and to taste, like in to have the taste of.”

“Yup, it does. Ringing any bells among us poor monoglots?” Dan asks, embracing the class as a whole.

“Savour?” Jack asks from behind him.

“Awesome,” says Dan. “However, although that little digression taught us something about the wonders of Romance linguistics and how, if you’re diligent, studying Latin can give you at least four languages for the price of one, as well as the fact that like in many of its daughter languages, _sapere_ in Latin can mean both to have knowledge of and to taste of, ‘savour’ isn’t the right track here. _Sapiens_ as in _homo sapiens_ is.”

“So,” Jack asks the class, “ _insapiens_ , I mean _insipiens_ , means?”

“Dumb?”

“Stupid?”

“And what would you call it or someone who had all those characteristics in, I dunno, more formal English?” Jack thinks to ask.

“A fool,” says the girl who baited Steve.

“Your work is done, Jack,” says Dan as Jack shows a high-five to the class. “Oh, one more thing,” to his retreating back.

“Just checking you know what that ending is?”

Jack looks at him for a long time, trying to work out if it’s a trick.

“No way,” he says finally. “It can only be genitive singular.”

“That right?” he says to the class.

Some furious thinking goes on and then Steve pipes up:

“Yup only possible variation for a third declension adjective and all present participles decline that way and anyway that goes for the noun _homo_ too, _hominis_ can only mean ‘of a man’.”

“And now my work is done,” says Dan, bowing to the class.

They get out their pens and paper, clearly knowing what to do. Dan motions Jack over to him.

“I want a translation of the sentence on my desk ten minutes from now. You need to show me that you have understood the individual words as well as the sentence as a whole. You can do a literal translation and follow it with a proper one. You will explain in detail in writing anything you cannot translate or understand. The only way failure can be justified, the only way your continued presence in this class will be permitted in such a case, is if you can show me proof of an inquiring mind and by that I mean of a real interest in the subject. Use my desk–as I want you to stretch your mind, and that may mean being able to stretch your body as well.”

“Yes, sir,” Jack snapped back, electrified. Not to say both encouraged and terrified.

 

There’s a twenty-minute break after they’ve handed in their translations and Jack is sitting against one wall of the courtyard behind the lecture hall. He doesn’t smoke and he doesn’t want a coffee.

“So what you do make of Dastardly Dan?” a voice asks from beside him, as the confident girl from class steps across his long legs. She tells him her name is Sylvia and that she likes to speak her mind.

“I thought they called him the Ogre?” Jack replies with a question of his own.

“Nah that’s just the newbies; they’re the ones with the highest dropout rate. They’re the ones he takes pains to weed out. This was a cake walk.”

“You mean you’ve had him before?” Jack says and can’t keep the astonishment out of his voice or the embarrassment at the unintended double entendre, “I mean been taught by him?”

“Bit long in the tooth for me, actually seriously long in the tooth, though he’s almost cute in a scruffy way. And yeah I did basic remedial with him couple of years ago–five weeks of summer school with the Ogre, and it wasn’t pretty: he’s ferocious about making you quit if your heart isn’t in it, or as he puts it: if you won’t apply yourself, but that’s when I sort of fell in love with Latin. Sick, right?”

“It’s just I don’t think I’ve ever heard anyone say that.”

“Fall in love with Latin?”

“Yeah, so anyway why are you back?”

“Dropped out of school but I kept at my Latin and now I want to take it further. I can’t afford a degree course but anyway the undergrads here say you learn more from a couple of weeks with Dastardly Dan than a year in the department. I’m just lucky he opted to do advanced remedial this year.  A fortnight with him and then I can tackle a lot more difficult stuff reading on my own. And anyway it’s not as if there aren’t cribs for every major Latin text, you know, if I get seriously stuck.”

“That’s really great,’ says Jack even more embarrassed that he never knows the cool words.

“So what was your translation?” curiosity makes her ask.

“That genitive construction really threw me but then I thought keep looking at the structure, at the contrast, see if you can see the underlying pattern–what the Ogre said really got through to me, I guess–and then  I realised: ‘It is of any man whatsoever to err’ could only mean something like ‘it’s typical of any man to err’ so I ended up with ‘Any man can make mistakes’ and then with the contrasting section, which was actually a lot harder–I just had no idea what _nullius_ meant until I worked out that it had to contrast with _cuiuisvis_ or anyone  and the _null_ bit gives it away. So I changed ‘it’s typical of no one unless of a fool to persist in error’ to ‘but only a fool keeps on making them.’

“I think the idea is more “it’s characteristic of,” Silvia says, “you know genitive of noun followed by infinitive along with the verb to be–did you notice how no one bothered to mention that little ‘ _est’_ even though the whole things falls apart without it. Anyway and I’m really not coming on to you here, I swear, but I actually like your version more than mine; it’s, I dunno, pithier.”

“Thanks”,’ He replies. “Uh, Silvia, you don’t wanna meet up later...uh...to swap notes, do you?”

“I think that could be mutually beneficial, Jack.”

“Cool,” he says.

 

Dan ended up liking Jack’s translation better, too. The sasquatch had promise. Steve, of course, got it totally wrong but he did it with such ingenuity and such attention to detail that he is convinced the boy will see the light before the remaining ten days are up. He read all the translations during the break. Almost everyone got the basic idea. Two were excellent, ten were home safe, five were middling with minor mistakes and the other two along with Steve would have to come back after the third session to see if a bit more work could help them get to grips with the genitive of characterisation or the predicate genitive as some grammarians called it. Though Dan was only really happy when his students ‘got it’ through absorbing and understanding the examples he worked through with them rather than simply being forced to learn a label. After all he’d managed to get pretty far without them, the grammatical terms. And he’d also learnt early on that the labels only really turn out to be useful when you’ve ‘got’ what they describe.

“So, it’s subjunctive all next week,” Silvia tells Jack, lying on the lumpy couch of his tiny bedsit just off campus.

“I think you mean it might be the subjunctive next week,” Jack suggests.

“I walked right into that one, didn’t I?” she giggles.

“Should I...would you...uh...let’s...” he can’t resist milking the situation.

“Who’d a thunk it–sex and grammar?” she replies.

“It’s like chocolate and apples, a truly unbeatable combination,” Jack comes back.

 

He was going to call her that afternoon after class, Beatrix, to schedule an appointment. The Cicero quote hadn’t been chosen completely at random.  Only a fool would go on reminiscing.

He thought he might be able to talk to her, see if she couldn’t help him stop. Maybe CBT could help. He wouldn’t be able to tell her the truth–that went without saying, not about Purgatory, not about the rest of it. He’d paint a slightly different picture, hinting at a not entirely kosher past with a suggestion of criminality, as an explanation for the way he’d managed to spend so much of the first half of his life with his brother. But the rest of the day got away from him; Pete was out of sorts and worried by the decline in sales. And he still had to prepare tomorrow’s class. Then Gus called to let him know he was back, which made his heart heavier. Ever since he’d split up with Holly–and he could never quite remember how or why that happened, his life seemed to be going downhill. Still no point in crying over spilt milk and besides he’d never had any luck with women. That was one language he’d never mastered. Two of the men in the shop were off work with the flu so he knew he’d have to put in an hour or two just to get the repairs done in time. And somehow the call never got made.

 

The morning after that, well, there was the accident and he was lying by the side of the highway and all he could remember was finding the leather jacket he’d lost a day or so before in the hall closet (Could Walker have brought it back from the office and left it there without saying anything?) as well as someone whispering to him over and over again. Not that he could remember the words. There was something stuck to his lip that he was itching to pick off but he couldn’t move. And then he was dead–kind of.

    

 


	5. Wintermind

# Chapter Five:  Wintermind

# Early Fall 2032, California–not far from Stanford

 

 

When Nell drifts into consciousness in the early hours to the tiny movements of her baby, she keeps her eyes closed and whispers soft sounds of reassurance to the child turning slowly in her belly. As she fumbles behind her head to adjust the pillow, the image of a great glass bell pops into her mind and the baby stops moving. He’s just interested, she tells herself, listening for that other heartbeat inside her. The baby moves again. That feels almost like a nudge, which makes her smile to herself in the dark. So she shifts her attention back to the bell in her mind, studying it more closely. Which is a mistake. She lets it go then, allowing it to recede a little into the background of her thoughts. Even so the secret takes its time.  That perfect transparency was what misled her: the glass is really ice; ice so cold all the imperfections have been frozen out so no trace of cloudiness remains.

“Wintermind,” she mutters to her unborn son. “Don’t let me forget.”

They both need to sleep only now, of course, she’s wide awake. She reaches for the water glass beside her bed and drinks almost all of it, imagining it’s much colder and more refreshing than it really is.

 

Dawn is not far off when Gus wakes to find Sam lying on the bed beside him. The other man is still dressed and lying on top of the covers. There’s just enough light for him to make out the features of his face which is turned slightly towards him... only he can feel the effects of the food and the wine soothing his soul and he slips back under.

 

An hour or two later and Nell is shaking his shoulder gently to wake him to tell him he should go downstairs for breakfast. There’s no one on the bed beside him. She’s got some of Bird’s clothes in her arms and adds with a grimace that none of his stuff survived the wash.

“That bad?” he asks as she leaves.

It’s a little alarming that he can put on the boy’s clothes. How thin am I? He’s alone in the bathroom having promised not to shower. He decides not to look in the mirror. He creeps down the stairs in stocking feet and makes his way to the kitchen. Freshly showered and in obviously clean clothes, Sam is sitting alone at the table and his heart sinks.

“Morning,” the other man says looking through some papers.

There’s a pot of tea on the table and he helps himself.

“I’ll make some toast in a bit,” Sam says. Gus nods. “Though come to think of it you should have oatmeal, maybe,” Sam says, with a sigh.

“Don’t like it,” Gus says very deliberately.

“Okay, then, no oatmeal which I think is disgusting too by the way, I was actually thinking more along the lines of porridge,” Sam declares as he moves over to the cupboard to the left of the sink and gets down a package of Scottish oats. He busies himself with bowls he pops into the microwave, having performed some kind of rite with salt, milk and water.

What he eventually plumps down in front of Gus is a milky bowl of lumpy grey sludge. He pops a little pat of butter on top and then goes to get the sugar bowl.

“I absolutely refused to eat it when I lived in England,” Gus says, as he takes a nervous spoonful; it’s warm and salty-sweet and filling though. He’s a bit surprised to realize he has finished the whole dish when he does. He nods his thanks at the other man.

There’s the sound of someone running down the stairs and then Bird bursts into the kitchen still in his pajamas.

“Surprised you’ve got any left, sunshine,” Gus says; he can’t help smiling at Bird’s bedhead.

“Morning, Uncle Gus,” the boy says and kisses him on top of his head. Then he pats his Dad on the cheek. Sam’s jaw has dropped. Nell comes slowly into the kitchen with a tray.

It’s when she puts it down that it finally dawns on Gus that she is pregnant. He tries to leap from his chair and then sort of falls back into it. She gives him a stern look.

“It’s not a disease, you know.”

He sits back down again, abashed this time. Sam puts some toast in front of him. There’s butter and marmalade on the table as well.

“Since when do you kiss perfect strangers in my kitchen?” Sam asks Bird in a tone of outrage. He’s not completely sure what Bird is doing but he’s got an idea.

“If he’s your brother’s partner,” Bird says, “that makes him family, or have I got that wrong somehow?”

“Come on, he meant...like business partner,” Sam stammers; Gus almost thinks it’s sweet and besides he has no desire to spare the other man’s delicate sensibilities.

“Dude, ‘business partners’ do not drive thousands of miles risking their lives for each other when they’re like at death’s door,” his son comes back.

“Yeah, you really should factor that into the equation, pops,” Nell chimes in, clearly imitating her younger sibling.

“When their business is at stake, they do...” Sam tries but it sounds lame.

“Dad, he was a whisker away from dying; the state he was in it’s a miracle he got here or he’s just seriously badass… or both. Anyway he’s got lore, you saw the way he moves. Trust me, Uncle Gus is not a businessman,” Bird counters.

Gus bursts out laughing.

“I am the worst businessman you could ever imagine, Sam.”

Sam ignores him.

“And what’s with the Uncle?”

“They’re partners, you know...God, sometimes it’s like you’ve been lobotomized...anyway he likes it.”

“What?”

“Being called Uncle Gus.”

All three of them turn to look at Gus. Who just holds out his open arms in an innocent shrug.

“Well he’s not your uncle. And you’re not to kiss him.”

“Actually...” Gus begins.

“Be quiet,” Sam thunders.

Nell is standing next to Gus and arching her back. He pours her out a cup of tea and hands it to her. She nods her thanks. Then he goes back to eating his toast.

“So, Gus, you were saying...” Sam asks.

“It’s just that,” he says between bites, “irrespective of the nature of my relationship with your brother, ‘uncle’ is generally considered to be a title of affection and respect when used by a young man to address an older man of the same lineage...”

“Hah! I knew it,” Bird says in triumph. So that was it.

“So now you’re claiming to be related to us as well?” Sam says in a tone of incredulity.

“Bird is right. I did like it. Though lineage is maybe stretching things a bit,” Gus admits.

“We both had a sense of something like that, Bird and me,” Nell announces.

“Oh well then, there’s no room for discussion - obviously I shouldn’t even have...” Sam sighs in a put-upon way.

“There is room for discussion,” his daughter counters. “It just didn’t sound like that’s what you were interested in.”

“Gus,” Sam says with a smile of fake congeniality. “Please share with us how you became a member of our family.”

“My mother was a first cousin of yours, of your mother I mean, of Mary Campbell. I think Sam Campbell’s brother was my maternal grandfather. And even more weirdly but you’ve got to remember this was rural Kansas and my clan had intermarried over many generations with other hunters, my father was also related to your mother but more distantly and on her mother’s side.”

“Wow,” Bird says. “You’re not making this up.”

“No, I’m not. Though I can’t prove any of it. It’s what my brother told me the first time I saw your father at the Roadhouse.”

“And you want me to believe my brother believes this?” Sam asks.

“When did I say that? Uh...yes, Dean does believe it. But that’s completely beside the point. What’s with all these claims you keep attributing to me? The only thing I am claiming is that Dean is in a fucking coma. Sorry,” Gus appears to falter, but he’s so annoyed he has to forcefully remind himself to put a lid on it. “Look,” he goes on addressing Sam. “My relationship with your brother is complicated and not what you think, or maybe fear–dude, that shouldn’t come as any kind of surprise to you, the complicated thing. My relationship with my family, my birth family, isn’t cos they’re all dead.”

“Gus,” Sam says then.

“Yup?”

“You just used the word that never dies.”

“I did?...Oh yeah, I did,” he smiles sheepishly. “I try and use it sparingly out of, you know, respect, though it’s true it will last until the end of time if only because it can never be improved on. With ‘dude’ the evolution of human language came to a complete stop and said, ‘Now I can rest at last; my work is done’.”

Bird slaps Gus on the back. Even Sam can’t restrain a grin.

Nell isn’t that impressed.

“Moving on,” she says in a manner so reminiscent of her uncle that Gus can’t conceal his astonishment.

“What?”

“Promise me you’ll never say the word ‘awesome’, Nell, please.”

She rolls her eyes to heaven.

“I’m leaving tomorrow,” Gus says getting up; he’s too tired suddenly to pursue the need to leave today. “If you can put up with me for another twenty four hours that is. The blue stone must have done the trick because I’ve just realized I’m thinking a lot more clearly and there are some things I’ve got to take care of later today…” he grabs the newspaper and puts it in front of him on the table and goes straight to sleep, his forehead on the front page.

Nell puts a hand on the top of his head.

“He’s out,” is all she says. Bird tucks a cushion gently under his head as he pulls the newspaper out from under his face.

Nell is a little mystified by how clearly attached he seems to be to Gus and at the same time she can feel it too in her own way. If there is one thing they can be totally sure of it would be that Gus cannot be working a spell on Bird, or casting a glamour on him. So it’s natural.

“Okay I played him,” Bird announces, “and I found out what we needed to know, but I felt it too, you know. And I did want to kind of hug him when I saw him sitting there in my pajamas. Come on, he’s my only male relative - I never had one before. Dad doesn’t count obviously.”

“Obviously,” Sam mutters.

“I feel a bit bad. Cos he was really, really touched, you know. Then again, I wasn’t like actually faking it. Only it would have been better if I’d just asked him. At least there wasn’t any puke in his hair,” her brother says, his voice tailing off.

 

The kitchen is deserted when Gus comes to, so he makes his way gingerly up the stairs but stops on the landing when he hears Nell calling him gently from below.

“You only fell asleep ten minutes ago,” she says. “One of us was supposed to be with you but I just popped out into the yard.”

“That’s good though, right?”

“I think so; but I want to try a stronger remedy,” she smiles sympathetically at his grimace. “Okay, unfortunate choice of words - I was thinking of something stronger than an amulet.”

“When were you born? I mean what day of the year?” she goes on to ask when he fails to protest.

“My real birthday? As opposed to what it says on my ID?” he responds.

“Yes. Do you know it?”

He has to concentrate.

“September 23rd, 1987 at 2am maybe 3am, north-eastern Kansas.”

She nods and then calls out to her father, who is in the bathroom.

“Dad, do you mind if we go in the Dead Guy’s Room? Me and Gus?”

All Gus can make out is a kind of grunt from the nearest room.

“Can you make it under your own steam?” she asks him.

“If it’s in this house and on the earthly plane? Probably.”

Gus keeps tight hold of the banister as they go down the stairs together. The runner is a fine if faded green matting that echoes the green of the outer walls. The hall and the stairwell are painted pale cream. There is a window onto the yard on the side with a wooden sill. It has nothing on it except an old blue pot: majolica or faience he thinks and not china. It’s a lovely pot. Dark blue swirls on a slightly paler blue. He stops to touch it, only to realize it is very old indeed.

They move into the hallway on the ground floor heading for the front door and away from the kitchen. Two doors, one right, one left. She says,

“Music room/living room on the right, and my father’s study on the left. Bird has always called it the Dead Guy’s Room.”

The closed doors are plain unvarnished wood with a fine grain. He’s noticing how clean everything is when he catches sight of some spider webs up on the hall ceiling above the light fitting. She follows his gaze,

“I know, but they’re friends.”

He nods as she turns the handle to the study and they go in.

It’s a huge room. The light from the lane outside is dimmed by Venetian blinds. A very large desk is set between the two windows that look out from the front of the house. There’s a small photograph of a woman on the wall above the desk. The back wall is one long bookcase from floor to ceiling. A long couch covered in an old throw is pushed up along the wall with the door in, with some cabinets tucked in the space between the end of the couch and the front of the house. There are more cabinets, on wheels this time, in the centre of the room and even so there’s a sense of plenty of open space. An armchair is pushed up against the remaining wall. And there’s a screen and a music centre next to it. The far wall is also covered in photographs. Sam’s diplomas are on there as well. The photographs are almost all of Dean, some together with Sam but mostly on his own.

“May I?” he asks.

She nods. He moves over to look at the picture of the woman first and then suddenly decides not to. He glances at Nell; she’s staring at him very intently. His instinct says back off so he does. He doesn’t want to look at the images of Dean, only he can’t help noticing that among them is a photo of a grizzled, older man. There is no way he can stop himself going over to it; he touches the image gingerly and or so it seems to Nell almost wistfully and then looks over at her.

“You couldn’t have known him either, could you? I mean I never had any idea what he looked like, only he looks exactly like I always imagined him. Your uncle - I mean your real uncle - hasn’t got any pictures of him. Not of Bobby,” his voice tails away.

Nell says nothing at all in response. So Gus decides to come straight out with it:

“I’m pretty sure I’ve been interfered with… mentally, Nell. Though I’ve been thinking more clearly since I put the stone on–the one you gave me last night,” he says touching the amulet around his neck.

“It’s jade, the rarer blue kind.” She pauses. “You know about stones, and yet you don’t?” she says quizzically. “You’re clued up on lore–to some extent at least–but you seem to be clueless about curses.”

“I know this is blue and that’s about it.”

“But you understand that the stones have no virtue in themselves, right? That they have to be well we, or rather the Sisters, would say ‘blessed’? Actually we would say it too,” she acknowledges.

He’d only glanced at the two large watercolors on the wall by the door when he entered the room. One is of what looks like a Tuscan valley. It shows a road weaving between hills and edged with Lombardy poplars. The other is of a small city on a hilltop stacked full of medieval towers. The second one is much less well painted but is curiously touching.

It’s then he notices a photograph between the watercolor and the light switch beside the door. It seems to show the same scene but when he goes up to it he can see a house in the foreground in the fields below the town which is actually perched quite a long way away.

“It’s really small,” she says. “My mother bought it when she was a student and we’ve never had the money to do it up. A kind of comfy ruin but it’s got a little olive grove and a vineyard. And now there aren’t any more transatlantic jet flights, it’s a nightmare to get to. It’s where your pot - the blue one you liked - was found...”

“San Gimignano… delle belle torri,” he says realizing there is only one place the town can be. With those extraordinary medieval towers. “I went there when I was a student. I studied in Italy for a couple of months - in Perugia, a hotbed of sorcerers in the late Middle Ages as you no doubt know.”

“And what was it you studied?” she asks, with what strikes him as a rather indulgent smile.

“Etruscan scrolls: there are new theories about a linguistic link with Minoan Crete. Only believe it or not, I read up on witchcraft as well while I was there,” he answers. “For a paper.”

“It’s just I’m a little confused by your ignorance, _zio mio_ ,” she goes on - it’s the first time she’s called him uncle. Even if it’s in Italian. He understands perfectly it’s mean to take the sting out of the word ‘ignorance’.

“ _Ma e certo une deformazione professionale,_ ” she goes on.

“I guess you’re right,” Gus says. “And maybe I am professionally deformed. Over-specialized. As you just said, it’s bound to be a case of occupational blindness–this inability to recognize the effects of a curse. Only that kind of blindness doesn’t sound quite right either–there’s really no good term in English.”

He snorts ruefully which gets a more amiable kind of nod from Nell. He’s a little uncomfortable with the way this is starting to feel like a test. He tries to remind himself she can’t be more than nineteen… but the resemblance to her uncle is distracting. Not that Dean has ever shown the kind of composure that seems to come naturally to her. And part of him keeps wanting to hug her–to reassure her; he can’t quite work out why that is and in any case she’s the one taking care of him.

“It’s just that now you’ve got me thinking about it I don’t feel totally convinced. It’s been slowly dawning on me how much isn’t right. I mean okay the deformed thing and obviously I’m ignorant about some major areas of lore. Only come on–who isn’t, the field is vast? Something’s definitely been done to my mind, Nell. I said I’d been ‘befuddled’ last night cos that was the word that came to me–though okay I’m not entirely sure what it means. Only it’s not just the thinking and the decision-making. It’s the connections I’ve been missing. The obvious things I’ve been overlooking. Like I haven’t got any insight–like I haven’t had any insight, I mean, until you lifted the curse...”

He’s hoping she won’t just nod at that too. Instead she turns away from him and opens one of the little cabinets in the middle of the room. She pulls out a lidded tray that she carries over to the couch. He joins her there. They both sit perched on the edge; the tray in her lap. He can’t see what’s inside it.

“So,” he says. “I’m thinking _Clare_ but I’ve never used it, don’t know if it is any good and I’m not even sure you can wield it on yourself?”

She shakes her head at first and then turns to look him straight in the eye, her finely arched eyebrows raised. Gus isn’t sure what that means.

“Befuddled is a term the Sisters use–I’m kind of surprised you know it. I’m not sure you are–befuddled, I mean. But what you just said about missing connections–like they were being blocked–makes me a bit surer about this thing I want to try,” Nell tells him finally. “Because there’s nothing in the lore that I know of that will work fast enough or be thorough enough. _Clare_ and _Claritate_ just won’t cut it.”

Gus nods.

“It’s a white witch thing, a spell the Sisters gave us,” she looks at him warily.

“Okay?”

“And it’s just at the very limit of my abilities… and it requires the sanction of an MSA, in theory.”

“So you’re not…uh…solely a healer, you’re _contra maleficos_?”

“A witchfinder, yes. Though that’s a euphemism. It’s true I’m supposed to find them but the real aim is to kill them; it’s an unfortunate term - witch - laden as it is with a history of male oppression. But we’re sort of stuck with it and I’m sort of stuck with witchfinder. So you’re right. And as I suspect you know perfectly well you have to be a healer–of a kind–to be a witchfinder.”

“I meant healer, I suppose, as in _foci_ not _belli_. Besides you’re very young to be a loremeister,” he says more gently. It sounds more tender than patronizing to Nell.

“Oh, I’m not quite there yet,” she says with a little laugh and then she decides to ask with equal gentleness.

“We’re you much older?”

“Only a little,” he acknowledges. After all she went first.

“I’m thinking _Wintermind_ would do the trick,” she continues. “It’s only licensed for me _in extremis_ , it’s just that assumes an unwilling…uh…target. Whereas if you were receptive; if you could receive it as a gift…”

“The casting would be much less challenging and, let me guess here, much less dangerous,” he replies.

She shrugs and cocks her head in a way that reminds him of one of his teachers. The greatest of them, the one who used to shrug whenever he brought the subject up.

“All white magic is inherently dangerous,” Rosamund told him shortly after they met. “For us. Though that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t do it… when all else fails. Provided you’ve the aptitude. Oh, and a certain ferocity helps.”

“It’s not one of the great spells of winter–I’d be out of my mind to attempt one of those,” Nell says interrupting his reverie, “but it is from a related…uh…vein. It is powerfully integrating, so it won’t damage your nervous system: if anything it should speed up the recovery.”

“What about yours, your nervous system, I mean?”

“If I can cast it on you rather than against you, we’ll be fine. All three of us,” she says, with a flick of her eyes towards her belly. “And I’ve been preparing it since I woke up so we’re good to go…when you are.”

Gus stands up and walks over to the window, looking distracted. He peers through the blinds. He notices that the upper part of the window frame has a smaller pane that is slightly open to let a little air in.

“And there’s no risk to you provided I drop my defenses…?” he says, with his back still turned to her.

“None; okay, perhaps a very small risk but no greater than any other working. And the life of my father is at stake here.”

He nods at that.

“There’s something I should do first,” he says. “I’m going to veil rather strongly so you may want to turn on the light.”

He settles on the floor while she steps over to the wall near the window to turn on the desktop lamp and then she decides to sit on the long couch. The light comes on just as the veil takes form. Almost iridescent curtains of dark grey cover the windows first, then the door, the ceiling, and finally the walls before they start seeping across the floor. The grayness sifts under Gus and extends to reach the couch where it slides under her feet and then the entire room is sealed. It doesn’t escape her that he does it without a sign or a sound.

“I’ve been surviving mostly the last few months so the walls that shield my inner life have shrunk. And then I was afraid your father was going to torture me so I shored them up even more which is a bit like thickening them and that leaves even less space inside. It all needs to be bigger. I need a much bigger place for my spirit to be. And before I drop my wards. Otherwise I’m not sure dropping them will work. And something tells me my defenses could be extremely dangerous. I can’t tell you why exactly. But I can say that this isn’t about me not trusting you–it’s about diminishing the risk of something going wrong.”

He closes his eyes and his wards feel different to her. It’s just a sense she has after all. It’s as if he lets them become elastic; still responsive but slower to react. And it’s not just his wards, everything feels slower. The little currents of air in the room that stir the blinds feel much fainter. The baby’s heartbeat remains the same but the speed of her pulse drops just a little; she’s reassured to note that it’s stronger and calmer. Gus starts humming to himself while she watches and waits. The lines fade from his forehead as some of the strain leaves his body. He keeps his eyes shut and continues to hum. His breathing starts to change as the humming finally fades: first his exhalations become much slower and longer, then the inbreaths change to match them. His shoulders widen and his back lengthens as he sits taller, his chest expands.

“In animo quam est in corpore,” he finally announces–in mind as in body– just before he raises his wards to full power again. He leaves the veil in place as he moves slowly back to sit beside her.

“I so sanction,” he says very calmly. “I am going to drop my wards on a count of five…”

She readies all the firepower at her disposal, holding it at the back of her mind just in case… It won’t be much not while she’s busy with the working but he’ll be defenseless. Nell is a bit taken aback by the abruptness with which finally he lets them go. He remains turned toward her at the awkward angle the way they are sitting imposes on them, so she stands and he stands too and turns to face her full on.

What she has been working on since the baby woke her in the early hours is a bell. A great bell made of ice so pure it looks like crystal. It’s not as if there is a set image for the working all ready and waiting. You have to make it yourself–to make it your own. And the truth is she’s not entirely confident the spell is really within her reach. Even as a gift it will stretch her to her limits.  It’s just that the image arrived so strongly when it did that it has sort of made up her mind for her. And if ever she has to cast the spell against someone then the bell will be made of frozen fire with a clapper so cold it burns. But that is for another hopefully very distant day. Nell puts the final touches to the clapper of the crystal bell, making it just long enough to strike the rim. And the second she feels it has reached its final form, she pulls back from him a little so she can start shaping signs across the air–all in a single plane–more like a summoning or an invocation than the spells she is used to.  The sequence is very tricky and, though her concentration is ferocious, her mind is suddenly very clear as she holds the great bell at the forefront of her attention. She rests her forehead against his and doesn’t so much as unleash the spell as ‘pass’ the bell to him. He can’t say no. And as she does so, in that very fraction of a second, the crystal clapper hits the rim. She can feel the vibration run through the two of them–with a momentary little shock like dipping a toe in freezing water. Gus instinctively closes his eyes. She closes her own as her left index finger moves to touch the amulet around his neck while she places the first two fingers of her right hand almost directly against his forehead, leaving only a tiny gap of air for her fingers to glide across as she swipes them from left to right. And then she pulls her hand back again to write three minor glyphs with one finger across his chest: to seal the gift.

He pulls away from her, dropping his now open eyes and staggers ever so slightly. His arms lift a little almost by reflex as his wards come back up; the veil drops as though it had never been there. He sinks back down onto the couch and rests his head in his hands. A gust of wind pulls the scents from the lane outside into the room. Dust and redwoods and eucalypts though she could swear she can also smell lemon and sage.

Gus opens his eyes a second or so later and looks up at her long and hard.

“Minor?” he says. “That was like a bomb going off.”

“Any clearer?” she asks.

“Oh yeah: clear as a bell, Nell,” he replies, and then turns his eyes towards the window. “Only you’re going to say the effect is directly proportional to the degree of ‘befuddlement’, aren’t you?” he goes on. “And a bomb going off means…?” he asks, switching his eyes back to her. But before she can respond, he smiles to himself and continues: “Though not really a bomb, more like a blast of the arctic night; I’ve never felt cold like that: it just ‘burnt’ all that evil stuff right out, washed it all away.” He shakes his head again as though he can’t quite believe it. “That was the biggest hit of wintergreen I, or anyone else, could ever imagine. And my mind feels like it is suddenly full of space… the connections are coming back online now. Little lights going on.” He stops there and then looks her full in the face. “The baby?” he says. “You?”

“We’re good. We felt some of it, you know, like an echo. No,” she adds with a little laugh, “that’s really trite. It was more as if we felt this pure note go through us. I guess like when you strike the rim of a glass and there’s this one clear tone. A perfect harmonic…”

He gets up and moves to kiss her on the forehead; she allows it.

“I’ve been doing this a long time, a really long time, and though I’ve never had the juice to be one of the major players–I’ve picked up some skills here and there. And I’m not as… disapproving… shall we say…of white magic as some of our colleagues. Far from it. Only I try to remember what Rosamund told me once…”

“You knew her?” Nell interrupts him to ask.

“I’m really old, remember,” he comes back. “…If only because she wasn’t as disapproving either. And while it was part warning, I’ve always felt it was just as much an encouragement in a way. Like a coded message: ‘White magic’s always perilous,’ she said, ‘perhaps most of all because when you get it right, and trust me there are no second chances–you have to get it right, it is never less than absolutely beautiful’.”

He gives her a sidelong look as though weighing up how to proceed.

“A perfect harmonic–that seems to me exactly right. And you did it very well, Nell,” he grimaces at the second rhyme and at his own clumsiness. “You cast it beautifully. Thank you.”

She doesn’t even pause to acknowledge that before asking,

“I take it you’re primarily a demonologist from what you’ve said and from other...uh... clues?”

“Yup, an exorcist… uh, mostly, though I’ve been in a scrap or two,” he says, apparently unwilling to accede to her priorities.

She raises her eyes at the odd turn of phrase.

“Uh, I was at Oxford for a bit. Some of the lingo rubbed off.”

She says nothing just keeps looking at him.

“It tends to come out when I’m prevaricating.”

Damn, she’s good. She’s got more out of him in a few minutes than any interrogator he’s ever faced.

“So I’m right to assume that your specialization means you can ‘isolate the taint’?”

“That’s a fair assessment. I mean that I can tell you if a spell or curse, provided I can identify it, carries a demonic fingerprint. Countering it would be another matter. But yes.”

“And there’s been no hint of anything like that in your interactions with my father’s brother over the last six months. And nothing about the hexbag or the jacket was demonic?”

“No, nothing. That’s why I was so keen for Bird to show me the twigs, at least I think that was the reason. My memory isn’t entirely clear, not yet at least.”

“Pity, it’s always so much easier when there’s a demon involved,” she says.

He looks at her aghast.

“Come on, I’m only referring to my uh ‘field’,” she explains. “Unlike lore witches, pact witches never live very long because their masters are all too eager to redeem their contracts. You must know that?”

He nods, not sure what he’s done to earn quite that much impatience.

“So, because it’s really only the age of the practitioner that matters in the black arts, demonic witches never or as good as never reach a level of skill, or I should say, a level of familiarity with spellcraft to pose an insuperable problem. And what with fewer active demons since Hell was closed...”

“The older the witch, the bigger the problem,” Gus replies.

“What we’ve got to work out–if we can–is just how old and how big,” she says with a sigh.

“And I need to come up with a way of testing my intuition,” he says a little disconsolately. And then more alertly, “Uh, like I said, not much juice and I’ve got even less with my nervous system being down. Though now my mind’s back in the game, thanks to you, what I really need is a focusing aid, a prism. You got one lying around?” he asks her with a tentative, slightly quizzical smile.

She reaches across the couch to grab the tray with one hand. She can’t restrain a rueful smile when she turns back to see him slumped against its back; he’s partly leaning against her though he doesn’t feel heavy. This time she looks over at the little clock on the desk. And then she surprises herself by taking one of his hands between her own. It’s a while before he comes to; he’s instantly awake and his eyes are really bright: they look a question at her.

“Eighteen minutes and you look so much better.”

He sits up as she reaches for the tray again.

“You must close your eyes now,” she says. She checks that he has shut them before pulling off the lid. Then she takes his hand and lets it hover over the stones that line the container. “If you feel a pull, tell me...” Almost immediately though his hand stops moving, poised above the middle of the tray.

“I feel a big pull,” he declares. “It’s hard to keep my hand from settling.”

“What does it feel like? Like something you’ve got to have?”

“No, not at all. It feels like ‘like calling to like’ or maybe heart calling to heart. I don’t mean to sound poetic but that’s the image that came to me.”

“Then it’s okay to let your hand settle,” and of course he does. His fingers close round what feels like a small piece of glass, cut like a gem, and he lifts it from the box. He keeps his eyes closed. He can feel the cord that binds the little prism being tightened around his wrist as it is gently pressed against the point between the radial and the ulnar arteries. He immediately feels calmer and more rested. His heartbeat slows and feels stronger. His head feels even clearer, though he’s not sure that is possible. It dawns on him that he is much less afraid of the sudden crashes; though he’s pretty sure that’s the spell rather than the stone.

“What do you feel now?” she asks.

“Ianua patescit,” he says. “That’s what I feel. A door is opening.”

“So open your eyes.”

When he does he sees another blue stone on a cord wound in a bracelet shape but where the jade was muddy this one sparkles with a clear inner flame.

“I can’t accept it,” he says. “That’s a sapphire.”

“It called to you. Like to like. It was my mother’s favorite though it never called to her. She would have wanted you to have it. And I am a much better judge of that than my father. Besides, it’s your true birthstone. A prism like you asked for; only it’s a very powerful talisman as well–which you may need just as much.”

“Did you know I would pick it?” he asks.

“I can honestly say that from the moment I went to get the tray, I had not the slightest doubt,” she answers.

“Then I guess I can’t refuse. But I don’t feel worthy of the gift.”

“Matthew 8,” she says.

He smiles and nods.

“I think, with your permission, that I should tackle the jacket on my own. I realize your condition gives you a certain kind of immunity. But I would feel much happier, and I mean much, much happier, if there were no more contact between you, the life you carry and that abomination. And that goes for your brother and your father too.”

“Bird will help you,” she says. “He is in no danger.”

“Will we be coming back in here?” he asks.

Nell nods.

“Great. I kind of like the Dead Guy’s room. It’s spooky but in a good way.”


	6. The Slow War Thing

**Chapter Six: The Slow War Thing**

**Early September, 2007, Wyoming**

 

“The end of the line?” Gus asks, pointing to the spot where the track appears to just stop in the middle of the dell. It’s hard to make out because of last year’s carpet of pale brown leaves and faded pine needles. It looks as if this final section of railroad is missing its ties and pins. As if it has given up the ghost. Brown on brown, and even under the wide skies of southern Wyoming with grey-blue hills lifting above them on all sides, it’s almost gloomy under the surrounding trees. No, Murph tells him, there’s a church at the end of the line. And each line meets another where they end. The ties and the pins may be gone, he adds, but the rails are there. The iron is still in place even though no train has ever passed along it. He brushes some of the fallen leaves away so Gus can see for himself.

 Murph motions him over to the other side, and once they’ve crossed the tracks, a larger glade abruptly opens to their right after Gus hacks them a way through a thorny patch of buffalo berries.

Not that it’s any kind of secret; this is his ‘trial’: a test to see if he has the mental, or is it the psychological, resilience required. So far it’s been fairly undemanding, and even if the coach journey from Montana was on the long side, the hike out has been great. Ten miles over bluffs and the long escarpment with awesome views over the heavily fissured terrain and its mostly dried up rivers and creeks. That was before they’d met up again with the bus and the other teams on the forest road. After a quick sandwich and some coffee they’d set off on their own once more into the wooded slopes leading down into this basin. Murph had told him it was his job to keep his eyes peeled for the waymarks signalling the edge of the Trap. Once they found the railroad they’d be inside it, though what they were supposed to do when they got there he wasn’t telling.

Gus had noticed Murph wheezing a bit crossing the bluffs; he’d even caught his teacher clutching his side at one point as he hurried to catch up with the older man’s long strides. And if anything it seems to be getting worse. The guy’s a pro so it must have come on quick; a cold, a chest infection, whatever. Now they’ve come this far, Gus is going to be pissed if the trial has to be cancelled–and relieved as well, of course.

He knows he’s supposed to stop and let Murph go first; even so there’s something about this new clearing that brings him up short. A vague unease and nothing more than that. He keeps quiet on the whole about his touch of precog; no point in giving them more reasons to distrust him. But it’s not that, or most probably not; it’s more that the other man is unsettled and it’s affecting him. He looks over at his teacher: there’s a greasy sheen of sweat on his forehead, running into his caterpillar eyebrows and dripping onto those large though oddly shaped blue eyes that are staring now from effort.  They both move into the clearing at the same time; only Murph suddenly bends slightly at the waist, rights himself and then tumbles forward onto the dusty soil, clutching his side. He groans and rolls onto his back. It’s an overcast day and the grey light emphasises his pallor. He brings his knees up to his chest and then slips his right hand down to palp the lower right-hand side of his abdomen. That quite obviously hurts a lot and he nods to himself.

“I hate to say it but you’re going to have to call our friend,” he says to Gus.

“Appendix?” Gus asks.

“Whatever it is, the pain’s severe enough to stop me functioning. And it’s getting a lot worse.”

Gus snaps his phone out and pretty much as expected discovers there’s no signal. Blocked by the buttes they had climbed over to get to these woods. The road must be five miles behind them or maybe more: the going had been rough in places and the hike back would likely take him at least an hour. Besides network coverage was bound to be spotty in this rural a part of the state. He can call the team doc when he gets a signal.  He reminds himself that the rails are proof they are finally within the circumference of the Trap–an area that’s been demon-free for generations so that’s one worry out of the way. He’s pretty sure there are no timber rattlesnakes in the state. And he isn’t worried about wolves this far south. Grizzlies? Anyway, forget predators–he needs to either get Murph out of here or find someone who can help.

“I’m assuming the test thing is cancelled, and we need to get you somewhere you can be treated?” he asks, but the other man’s eyes have glazed over. He’s not walking out of here, Gus realises. There’s nothing for it; he’s going to have to lug him into the shade of the overhanging bushes and start back the way they came for help. He’s no idea how long he’s got before the appendix perforates: so the sooner he acts the better. He’s also not entirely convinced, not a hundred per cent, he’s not being played; this might be part of the trial. He’s not popular with either the staff or his fellow students, and Murph, for one, has never shown him any favours. Mind you, he doubts the symptoms are faked if only because he’s not that kind of guy. Murph wouldn’t choose a ruse that left him that exposed, or so Gus thinks. There’s a sudden movement at his feet which makes him leap up with a stifled scream. It’s something fairly small like a rat or a weasel because it’s gone before he even sees it. The sun comes out briefly to shine down on them. The clearing looks as if it’s been blasted: there’s a sharp edge to the space as if the trees had been scythed away to form an almost-circle; it could just be natural though. He can’t remember for a moment what the term is for ET-landing sites. Right–crop circles, well there are no crops here. And aliens are the least of humanity’s worries. Honestly, who’s got the time for that shit? There’s a large and irregular shaped grey-brown rock in the middle of the open space that sticks up about nine inches above the soil. Ritual sacrifice? Now he’s looking for overt signs of the uncanny: but then they wouldn’t be uncanny, he remarks sourly to himself, if they were overt, would they? He’s feeling increasingly uneasy about leaving Murph here. After all he has no idea why this spot was chosen, this section of the circle. And they’re only barely inside it. Although he’s got a vague understanding of the significance of the location, Colt, the Trap and so on, he has absolutely no idea why it was chosen for him and the others being tested.

“Some help here, Murph?” he mutters, but his teacher just mumbles something about needing to stay completely still. Dragging him into the shade turns out to be no easy task, the man’s not heavy but he is big and he reacts to every jolt with sickening groans–which slows Gus down a lot more than he’d like. It’s as he finally gets him hidden under the low branches of a small deciduous tree: wild cherry, maybe, from the bark, that he notices the birds and all the woodland sounds have stopped. The silence is absolute and arrives all at once. Like a guillotine falling. It feels like the world has gone dead. He knows that’s bad, very bad.  Even Murph is making no sound. He puts a finger against the other man’s jugular and then is caught by his eyes. They’re almost popping out of his head with the effort to attract his attention without breathing a word. He nods at him. And leans in as close as he can to his lips. He has to suppress a sneeze from all the dust.

“I can smell ’em,” Murph whispers. And maybe very faintly Gus can too. It’s just at the edge of his awareness–a vague sour scent. As silently as he can, he extracts Murph’s blade from his boot holster and presses it into the other man’s hand as he pulls his own smaller knife from his sleeve. His hand twitches as he writes the glyphs across Murph’s chest for a pall of extra gloom. Using lore without sound is tricky but then _Lugubre_ is easy enough to be sort of within his comfort zone; he doesn’t need reminding that it’s a spell of mourning as well but of course an inner voice does exactly that. Even though it serves to provide them with some extra cover and helps muffle the sounds they will inevitably make, it also makes it harder to see what is coming. He’s surprised he’s not terrified. Okay he’s scared, really scared, it’s just he’s not panicking, not yet anyway. That’s what surprises him most. A deer chooses that moment to cross the open space in front of them; they’re so well hidden it starts foraging only a pace or two away.  It nibbles at the lower leaves and appears to be staring straight at Gus from one large and lovely eye. A warm animal scent comes off the doe. If he could he’d like to brush the delicate muzzle and stroke the skin of its neck–just to feel the life in it. The timorous but insistent life in it. He starts readying his laughably inadequate wards the way he’s been taught: to seal the house of self against intrusion. He can’t withdraw entirely, in fact he can’t withdraw his awareness at all, not if he’s going to defend himself and his comrade; only he has to do what he can to protect himself from compulsion. Murph on the other hand can, so he whispers in his ear. The other man nods and simply sighs _Vale_ _Auguste_ just at the edge of audibility, and then his body goes slack. The deer seems to hear something from beyond the gloom: the crack of a branch, a footfall, a knock against a tree trunk, beyond the range of human ears in any case, and bounds away.

There’s always the possibility they won’t be found, it occurs to him. Whatever’s out there could be hunting something else. Maybe the hunters are in fact the other teams–that hope lasts for a few seconds before he remembers the sudden falling of the silence. Nope, not human that. The scent of sulphur comes clearly if still faintly on the air currents that pass beneath the bushes just to confirm his worst fear. He might be able to get the better of two of them, if that’s all they are. With a great deal of luck. If he can aim his knife right; if he can see to aim it right. And if they’re young.

Something heavy flies through the air to land on the sunken rock: it must have been hurled at least twenty yards, maybe thirty. It’s such a mess of bloody flesh and torn viscera it’s only when the head slips down over the edge of the rock and is turned towards him he can make out it’s the doe. He’s disciplined enough not to react immediately despite the fury that suddenly fills him at the casual destruction of something so beautiful. Not casual, spiteful. Keep a lid on it, Gus, for Murph’s sake. The itching on his face is more of a problem though. The scar tissue is still too new to have calmed entirely and when his neck muscles tense... so relax them, he tells himself, and he does. Which is really kind of annoying; he’s no dunce at the meditative side of the discipline, but he has to let it come from within and whenever anyone tells him to relax, and that usually includes himself, he tends to tighten up in frustration. Of course you’re not supposed to need to be told–as is always being pointed out to him. Unnecessarily in his view. So, keeping his gaze softly focused on that staring eye, he opens his awareness to include all the tight spots in his body because if not now, when... and guides his breath into the contracting muscles. He can feel warmth stealing through him. He’s not cold even if he is afraid, but this is a different kind of heat: an unexpected softness melting his resistance from the inside. Although he doesn’t have a frame of reference to fit it into, it feels like something sad: not a passive, heavy sadness but a bright sadness almost. Like the key of D minor, he thinks, which is when it occurs to him that the resistance he is feeling is to dying. Woah, this is all happening too quickly: one moment they’re ambling through the woods and the next…

“You’re going to die,” his inner voice says. No hedging, no what ifs.

It’s the _Lugubre_ , he tells himself, only it doesn’t feel gloomy. If he was forced to describe it he’d say it felt more like how a last morning should feel, rather than mourning itself. So it’s not an effect of the spell. He’s heard it said too many times to be able to just ignore it that something happens when you face death. When your death is imminent. You see with greater clarity. One of the things he sees, and that surprises him, is that he actually cares about Murph, his teacher, the only good teacher he’s ever had. So what if he doesn’t seem to care very much for Gus? That concern doesn’t have to be mutual to be true, to be heartfelt. He likes that word. He likes the idea of feeling things with your heart where they can be clearer.

Nine men enter the clearing at different points, only of course they aren’t men.  He can make out their shapes through the latticed branches. The reek of sulphur is very pronounced now. He thinks the rule of thumb is that they smell strongest when they’re new only there are nine of them so ... The youngest-looking one, a boy-man still in his teens yells in a sing-song,

“Come out, come out wherever you are.”

It’s eerily seductive, like someone you’re not completely sure is a friend trying to scare you. Gus can feel it tugging at him despite his wards. Even Murph twitches. So this one isn’t young.

Though how nine demons can even have got inside the Trap is beyond him but it’s beside the point. They’re here, and they look like they’re a team. Like they were once a team. As if they belonged together before they were taken. Local hunters, the regular kind, from their clothes. A breeze picks up out of nowhere, bringing with it the tang of resin and something tarry. The tops of the bushes and the low trees surrounding the clearing shiver. The demons don’t seem to like it. Their eyes flash and some of them make low growling sounds.

So they haven’t got it all their own way.

I’m going to die; Murph is going to die, his own words sound in his mind with quiet conviction. There’s not much he can do about that. And something seems to be telling him to just accept it as true. What he says back after a moment’s consideration is: I should be in a rage, I should be in a panic. Acceptance isn’t the same as resignation is the answer that comes almost immediately. Right and that means?... only it’s kind of obvious what it means. I’d like to hear a bird sing before I go, he tells himself a bit forlornly . Maybe you can, but you’ll have to make it happen, he counters, shaking himself mentally.

Though it’s not really an exchange of words, more like currents or tides swirling inside him. Time has stretched and slowed. He keeps his eyes fastened on the dead animal. The rage and the fear are still there somehow, as well as the sense that surrendering to them would be so easy and so welcome. But he doesn’t pay them or it any mind. He’s caught up in something else. And it’s not the thought that he isn’t even twenty and this is just not fair.

The breeze dips for a moment and then returns more strongly. He hopes he’ll have time to take in the splendour of the surrounding hills and that vast sky when he leaves the shelter.

That huge dead eye is looking back at him. She’s not as young as he thought at first. Old enough to have had fawns. Old enough for the same hunters to have shot her but that would have been to eat and not for spite.

What strikes him then looking into that eye is so obvious he can’t understand why it never occurred to him before: the mountains will still be here afterwards and so will the canyons. The forest too. Nothing will really have changed. Life wears even demons down. Though it’s mostly the doe. The way she just…abides. It’s the only word he can think of. As in to endure without yielding. She abides out there and something of her abides inside him. Life, as they say, will go on, just not mine and not Murph’s. It’s not fair but it isn’t unfair either. It just is. The contradiction feels like it’s too much for him so he does that inner shrug and decides: Anyway, maybe I can take some of the fuckers with me when I go.

The hosts start fanning out beating at the bushes with their hands.

As quietly as he can he calls Murph back to consciousness, he whispers _Ave_ _Murph_ in his ear as his hand gently covers the other man’s mouth. Letting him die in his sleep no longer feels like a kindness but a presumption. He readies _Consone_ , seeing the glyphs in his mind, tracing the complex patterns in his imagination to be sure he remembers them exactly.

There are bound to be other students in the general area, other candidates close by. And that’s another thing–he, they, him and Murph, have to give the others a heads up. He’s never liked any of them very much and it’s been very clear the feeling is mutual but that seems irrelevant now. He thinks of his dead sister for a brief moment and can’t help a wry smile. Sorry, Anna, only you get it about the doe, right?–however frosty I manage to be, this will have to be messy and graceless and very, very noisy.

It’s always been a particularly sore point with him that the easier workings, the ones he can be taught as a novice, like _Consone_ , are the most complicated technically: they use more glyphs and when you’re slightly dyslexic, or more than slightly in his case, the rote learning involved is a killer. And what does he actually have in his arsenal? There’s so little of any use right here and right now. He can exorcise of course, but he’d need to stun the bastards into submission first. He isn’t sure even an expert scroll-worker can do that. He could maybe bend the breeze a bit to buffet them but he can’t make a tree fall on them.

Take the simplest workings of lore, they’d told him when he began, all you need is a single glyph, a minor gesture, a note or two but it takes years and years, even decades, to achieve the purity of focus required and first you have to master all the more complicated less important stuff. _Gaudio_ is the example they always give you: it doesn’t matter what five notes you sing, it could be Handel or Hendrix or anything else at all–as long as they rise. It doesn’t matter in the slightest if you can’t hold a note: it’s the purity of intention that counts with the hardest ones.  You can sketch the one glyph as lazily as you like but it’s absolutely impossible to cast the spell unless you know the rapture of mortality in your very marrow. Even some of the most experienced practitioners–the best of the new highly trained breed they’re calling loremeisters–never can. The great spells make demands that go beyond the mastery of technique; they require grace as well. A drop of blood rolls out of the doe’s eye. I don’t think I can avenge you, he says in his mind to the deer, I won’t avenge you, but I would really like to celebrate you.

“Make a big noise when you go, Murph,” he says, patting his shoulder and steps out of hiding into the clearing.

“Oh look, it’s a baby,” the teenager shrieks. “Donnie’s found you guys a tasty little morsel.”

Donnie can’t be more than sixteen, if that, and for a very brief moment Gus tries to remember what that was like. Only three, four years ago at the most, but it feels impossibly far away and long ago. Though the monstrous thing inside the teenager is most likely infinitely older.

Gus readies the blade in his hand and remembers to step a little to the side just in case Murph is up to a throw of any kind. He scratches his scar nonchalantly.

The teenager stares at him with an icy grin and then raises its hand towards him. Gus lifts his own left hand palm out, like saying hi. The compulsion feels as if fire ants are burning their way across his skin. He could let go and be flung back against a tree trunk but not yet.

“A pathetic fledgling just about to leave the nest,” the demon mutters to its fellows. They grunt and whine with rage and the hunger to kill.

“No way you can fly, little birdie, not yet,” Donnie spits at Gus. It beats its arms up and down in a grotesque parody of flight before adding, “All you can do is die.”

“I get,” Gus says ruefully, “that it must seem that way,” even though that is exactly how it seems to him.

“Seriously? Like what else can you possibly do?” Donnie stresses that ‘you’ with all the amused contempt it can muster. But the demon can barely contain its loathing underneath the sneer. Its hand forms into a claw; the pushing against his chest feels like a hurricane blast as Gus nods as if in resignation and says,

“I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills,” while he does, or one eye at least; the other stays fixed on the demon.

Donnie snorts.

“Why? Whatever it says in the Psalms, the cavalry ain’t coming.”

“Because the beauty of the world is something only mortals can share,” Gus replies, taking himself by surprise because they don’t sound like his words-only they do.

There’s a sudden flicker of the demon’s eyes. As if they lose focus, just for a second.

“Your point?” it asks, though for the life of him Gus can’t understand why it’s protracting the conversation.

“We can only share it because we’re no strangers to death and loss,” Gus tells it with an almost apologetic shrug.

Donnie waves the other hosts to come up beside it. The demon directs his next question to them.

“So?” it says, grimacing at its comrades in amused ridicule. The others chuckle dutifully, their eyes fixed now on Donnie, though they look a bit confused, and Gus can’t help wondering why he, or rather it, should feel a need to get them onside.

“So there’s this one thing you’ve overlooked,” Gus tells it solemnly.

Donnie’s eyes flash black as it cackles mirthlessly:

“Right. And that would be?” though the cackle turns into a cough as though something were irritating its throat.

Gus laughs aloud as the answer finally comes to him,

“The impossible.”

He sketches the glyph for Joy a bit shakily with his left hand as he sings the first five notes of “Every valley shall be exalted”; it’s actually the second bar: the iteration of “every valley” he goes for. And for the most fleeting of moments, he’s suddenly filled with the wild hope he can actually do it. Take them down. Yeah right - the fates will smile and AS IF BY MAGIC…. Only while he’s got the moves–and that is a surprise, what he realises all too well and far too soon is that he doesn’t have the juice. Because even though the glyph really is there, perfectly and precisely formed as it blazes across his mind, there just isn’t much to power it with.

In any case his effort doesn’t sound anywhere loud enough or sustained enough or joyous enough to him. So he sings on through “shall be exalted” and then, when the expected counter fails to arrive, into the stupendous ascending coloratura of the repeat. Okay, so his effort is far from stupendous and even though it’s one of his favourite bits from the Messiah, he’s never ever dreamed of actually trying to sing a freaking Handel aria. It’s just that someone used to sing it, most probably his Dad and if you could call it singing, round the house at Christmas when he was a toddler and besides he’s decided he’d like to go out, as that seems to be where he’s headed, on a really high and difficult note no matter how bad it sounds. And even though he’s got to do it a capella, for once his singing seems pretty good, passable at least, even to him; it’s as if the urgency of the moment was making his voice stronger and purer, and much louder. The notes in his only slightly wobbly tenor echo round the glade bouncing off the trees.  It’s like he can even feel them through his feet. He raises his right hand before the very last syllable of ‘exalted’ has been sung and sends the short blade as truly as he can at the right shoulder of the teenage demon. It strikes home with a dull thud.

And then the fucker smiles–Donnie grins, and it’s all teeth.

Only the notes he was singing refuse to fade when Gus falters momentarily at the sight–though they’re faint and getting fainter after that smile. But the newbies seem to have found the sound painful, exquisitely painful; even though he’s almost as much of a novice as they are: five of the ‘men’ are on their knees holding their hands over their ears and howling. Two are reeling and leaking blood from nose and mouth and one is looking vacantly at the sky.

Donnie seems oblivious though; the demon disdains to even remove the dagger from its shoulder. It snaps its fingers and the others snap to attention, every head whipping round to focus on Gus who watches the trails made as little jets of blood fly every which way. They stagger though as they get to their feet.

The demon opens its mouth while raising its hand palm out. All it’s got to do is flick that hand nonchalantly at him, Gus knows, even so he’s not afraid. Because there’s a choir inside him now and the sound keeps swelling as though ten, a hundred, and then a thousand people were joining in. He looks away from Donnie for a moment and smiles absently as he tips back his head a little so his eyes can lift towards the hills again. Fuck me, I’m about to die, and I am so…uh… stoked by the shape of those rocky outcrops and that endless blue sky I just want to keep singing.

When he looks back there’s a frown on Donnie’s face and the hand that was set to blast him has reversed. Its eyes do that unfocused thing again, it’s like they’re flickering on and off

“I’ve got to take this call, guys, they’re refusing to accept my busy signal,” the demon says, obviously pissed and a bit alarmed at the persistent interruption. Its fingers waggle and the other hosts and Gus can’t move; Gus can’t even breathe.

“The boss lady,” it announces. “And it’s urgent.”

 It lifts a finger to dab at the blood leaking from the wound in its shoulder and smears it across its lips. Its eyes turn to glass, and as they do, the wind picks up, the treetops creak and sway, and the air rushes back into Gus’ lungs so he starts singing again. Even though he can feel the notes going right through his heart and making his ears ring and his throat swell, he can’t make quite as much noise this time and his voice is softer and sweeter.

Donnie staggers as its eyes come back into focus and tries to shush him with an exasperated wave of one hand; the gesture looks more bored than anything else:

“Uh, guys, gotta go: I’m needed elsewhere. You’re going to have to finish him off on your own. Silence him first, cos this is getting old and then you have my permission to eat him, oh and start with the heart–if you munch on it while it’s still beating that’s the best bit,” it orders with a snicker and smokes out, leaving a startled teenager gazing in horror at the knife wedged in his shoulder.

 Maybe he should have gone with something less demanding–it might have worked better, it occurs to Gus, but the simple truth is that while demons loathe all music, he’s heard it said time and time again that what they really hate in the depths of their black hearts is choral music. A great many human voices singing as one: and when it comes to a choir of sheer gladness there’s not much to top Handel, maybe Bach.

 The teenager is trying to pluck the dagger out of his shoulder but fumbling in frustration; he can’t seem to see straight. At first the other hosts lurch towards Gus but then they start falling over each other. Like a drunken ballet, one minute they’re about to throw themselves at him, the next it’s like they’ve forgotten what they’re supposed to do. He can’t help noticing though that they’re a lot nearer than they were. And looking pissed, really pissed.

Not that he really cares-the sound of the singing makes him feel like he could fly now. Maybe leave the earth behind. Only Gus can hear Murph suddenly begin the ritual in a gasping wheeze; for a second or two he actually resents the interruption. And then he remembers to stop singing and cast _Consone_ , for once flawlessly sketching the complex glyphs “Of One Voice” on the air in front of him before repeating the words coming from behind him. Somehow it doesn’t surprise him that though he isn’t singing any more, the choir still is.

“Exorcizamus te, omnis immundus spiritus...”

The words of the exorcism feed into the polyphony of rejoicing. Doubling and redoubling in volume and potency, echoing the words of both the song and the ritual. Some of the singing, speaking, voices sound ordinary, homespun, and others magnificent and strange. Even as they rise towards the sky they feel as though they’re inside him as well, coursing through his veins and arteries. He begins again as Murph falters, “Exorcizamus…” and gets no further: all eight demons lurch as though their strings had been cut and start to scream as their heads tip back. Black smoke trickles from their mouths and becomes a stream and then a gush as the demons pour out of their hosts and arrow helplessly towards Hell. It’s only when they’re gone that the choir fades slowly away.

Gus turns in a daze to check on his teacher. Murph seems to be alive. The abandoned hosts are trying to pick themselves off the ground.

“Do you think I made enough noise?” Gus asks uncertainly as he bends over the man’s face and puts his ear to his teacher’s mouth.

“For what?” Murph bites out more loudly than he expected. “Attracting attention or exorcising any and every fucking demon within at least a ten-mile radius?”

“The first thing, I guess,” Gus says.

“Time will tell,” Murph says quite clearly though with a great deal of effort. “Only Gus, listen to me, you’ve got to come back now. That’s the most important thing, you hear me. Otherwise…” and his head tips back as he fades out again.

Gus doesn’t understand at first what he’s talking about. It’s true a large part of him is still out there with the choir. The notes haven’t stopped echoing round his head. All his senses are heightened; he’s been geared up and ready to go for some time. And then Murph groans again in pain, which is when he sort of gets it. Only it’s easier said than done–coming back and coming down from the heart-stopping elation, the ecstasy of readiness. He tries to reel himself in. He needs, Murph needs him, to be back in his body. So he looks over at the deer again.

“Spose none of you is a doctor or a nurse, or even better a surgeon?” he asks the hosts absently as he gets up and walks over to Donnie. What’s he going to do about the shoulder wound?

“Uh, I’m a vet...I think,” says number nine. “Right now, I’m not entirely sure about that.”

Gus nods and points at Murph, but then grabs the vet by the shoulders and plants him face to face with the teenager, who’s shaking and white from pain and shock.

“Pretend I’m a horse, Steve?” the boy begs the other man.

Steve shakes his head as he peers at the point where the blade has entered the meat near his collar bone. He tells the teenager it’s more dangerous to take it out right now-he’s got nothing to staunch it with and what he really needs is treatment for shock. The pain is the least of his problems. Donnie looks at him open-mouthed as he leaves him to take a look at Gus’ companion. Steve kneels down beside Murph while Gus resorts to hand signals to get two of the others to help him find some poles. The three of them move into the dell where there are a lot more fallen boughs. The vet still looks clueless when they return only a few minutes later laden with leafy branches and some stouter long bits of wood.

“I have to say goodbye to her,” Gus announces to the confused men gathered round him, as he bends down to stroke the head of the doe. It’s odd, he thinks, they’re not angrier or more desperate.  “I don’t want to leave her like this.”

One of the hunters tells him the scavengers will take the doe soon enough, and Gus nods a bit doubtfully. He pats Gus on the back and says,

“You gave her one hell of a send-off.”

And then someone else asks him if he wants to make a pyre for her. Instead Gus gets to his feet and shakes his head.

“She should go back to the earth. It’s just she’s been desecrated and I’m worried the other animals and the birds won’t touch her.”

“So couldn’t you like undesecrate her?” the first man asks tentatively.

Gus just stands there for a moment, mulling that over.

“That’s not a bad idea,” he says. “Let me think about it while we get the stretcher rigged.”

As he leans over to retrieve the wood, it occurs to him there’s always _Hallow_ : it isn’t really lore at all but a simple working of the spirit;  a weak form of white magic, if you like - the kind he’s not supposed to know about; a way to appease the spirits of place: a restoring of the balance. They could all do it. Just lay their hands gently on her body and commend her to the world from which she came and to which she has returned. That should take the taint away.

“Providing your friend doesn’t perforate,” the vet says, interrupting Gus’ reverie as he sorts some of the cross-branches. “I don’t think there’s a significant increase in morbidity associated with delaying the operation. The animals I treat just don’t get appendicitis, they can’t. You’re...he’s better off waiting for help to arrive. That’s if it does, of course...”

“About that...” Gus says. And then thinks first things first. The hunters have already rigged the poles and three of them are busy lining it with cross branches and their jackets. They don’t need his help. Only it’s clear to Gus that even working together as a team they’re not going to be able to carry both Murph and Donnie out. And besides he’s not all the way back himself, though being with the doe helped. He persuades Donnie to sit down with his back against a tree trunk and wraps him in his jacket. He can’t focus his attention, not properly; it’s more as if his brain is operating in fits and starts. He notices that one of the men lining the stretcher is weeping openly and tries to think of something comforting but he can’t. The man looks up at him at that very moment and smiles. It’s relief, Gus realises, he’s crying from relief, so he smiles gently back and then goes over to him and asks his name.  It’s Jerry, of course it is–the guy even looks just like a Jerry, or so he thinks.

 

Maybe he can carry Donnie in a fireman’s lift some of the way. He asks the former hosts if they would be willing to bless the doe with him. He explains what he needs them to do, telling the teenager he doesn’t have to do it and is surprised when Donnie staggers to his feet and is the first to approach the carcass. The boy rests his hand gently on the bloody muzzle for a long moment and then goes back to sit by the tree. Steve too gets up from beside Murph and stands in line with the other men who take it in turns to lay their hands on the animal’s body. Gus is the last to say farewell, bending over so his lips almost touch her torn ear as he whispers his blessing.

Only a few minutes later and Murph has been loaded onto the stretcher and four of the hunters have picked it up. The men are still a bit too cowed by what they’ve been through to want to take the lead and anyway Gus isn’t a hundred per cent sure at this point he knows which way they should head. He needs a moment to get his bearings. Where did they come into the dell with the track in? The seated teenager jerks suddenly away from the tree and asks them if they heard that? Every head except Murph’s snaps round to look at Gus. Their terror is palpable. He can’t think what to do. Just not be afraid.

“It’s dogs,” one of them announces a couple of moments later. “They’re not that far away.”

Gus pricks up his ears, listens intently and then leaps to his feet and starts shouting.

“Tracker dogs,” the vet says.

So they all start hollering and yelling. It isn’t long before they can hear barking from the neighbouring dell, and a tall blond man is suddenly marching into the glade and towards them with a couple of what look like assistants hurrying behind.

“Wouldn’t you fucking know it,” Gus mutters to himself under his breath. Still he’s the best and that’s what Murph is going to need.

There’s a brief exchange of greetings and Mengele drops to his knees besides the lowered stretcher. Gus lists the symptoms while the blond man nods and feels along Murph’s lower-right stomach.

“How the hell did he cast any kind of spell in his current condition?” the doc asks Gus.

“Uh, he didn’t.”

Mengele looks long and hard at Gus. Murph taps his hand and points with his eyes at Gus in confirmation. The healer ducks his head back to his patient and then back up to the younger man.

“You? Come on, I mean _Gaudio_?” He shakes his head almost as if he’s affronted.

“It was very much the ‘lite’-version,” Gus insists, feeling he has to defend himself. “A lot of noise and not much oomph!”

“‘Whatever it was,” Meng’ says with a snort and then adds more soberly, “it did the trick.” He shrugs in a way that is both derisive and almost appreciative as he glances over at Gus again.

“Called for joy, he was,” the shortest and most grizzled of the hunters suddenly announces, nodding at Gus. “Purely called for joy,” he mutters.

It’s such a quaint and poetic turn of phrase and so unexpected it seems to affect everyone, even the medic who actually appears to be thinking about it. Well, not Donnie, clearly, and Gus isn’t totally sure he gets what it means either.

The two helpers are busy tending to the demons’ victims. One of them has removed Donnie’s shirt and is pressing a gauze pad into the boy’s shoulder while slowly extracting the knife. Steve is ripping the teenager’s shirt into strips for a bandage. The healer asks his assistants if they can manage and just gets casual nods in reply. The man looking after Donnie gets him to raise his arm very, very slowly and then says he doesn’t think there’s any nerve damage.

“Good throw,” the assistant announces laconically.

“There’s a lot we don’t know,” Meng’ says to Gus as an aside. ‘”The Trap has clearly been broken and recently. And they seem to be heading out rather than in.”

The ‘doctor’ is silent for a moment as he injects something into Murph’s arm.

“Casualties are light but that’s only because as far as we can tell, you managed to get every one of the bastards in this neck of the woods,” he announces before adding, “And the rest of the ones who were moving in turned tail. We’re clear.”

He murmurs something to Murph about how the pain will ease in a while but the ride out is going to be hard on him.

“You need to do something,” he says to Gus, “to stop them being all dazed and confused.”

“Oh and like I’m not,” Gus retorts.

“Get over it because the ‘extraction team’ is in a hurry to get as far away from here as possible and I want him”–he nods at Murph–“on my table before nightfall.”

He looks at Gus in exasperation and then over at the vet.

“You know you’ve been raped, right?” Trust the bastard not to mince his words, Gus thinks.

The vet nods uncertainly.

“Violated in any case. Frankly I don’t know what we can do for you. You need counselling and really all we can provide is first aid,” Meng’ says and then turns to Gus. “How the fuck could the people in charge of this outing fail to notice this particular area is crawling with demons? Who in their right mind would choose to send a load of novices into a death trap? Heads are gonna have to roll, young man.”

It’s amazing how he still manages to make it sound like it is Gus’ fault. It’s a gift, he thinks. You can’t teach that.

“What about protection?” Steve asks them both. “Is there any way we can stop that happening again?”

“For now, amulets are the best we can do, although I’ve heard rumours there’s a tattoo that works better,” Gus replies. “Sorry I’m not too clear right now on what would be best. Amulets are what we use in any case. Not foolproof but they’re a lot better than nothing. I think we can spare some.”

“I need you to hold his hand, young man, I’ve given him antibiotics but the pain is intense,” the blond man says to Gus.

Weirdly the ludicrousness of being called that AGAIN and the fact he has to suppress a fit of almost hysterical laughter in response focuses his attention wonderfully - they’ve known one another since Gus was fifteen and Mengele can only be five years older than him at most.

“Meng’, he doesn’t like me,” he objects.

“Who does?”

Gus laughs merrily at the brusqueness of that; “It’s not going to be a comfort to him,” he explains.

“Not being liked isn’t the same as being disliked. Trust me, I should know. Besides, I’m needed elsewhere. Did you just call me Meng’?”

“Uh yeah, sorry Joe, it just slipped out.”

The healer is clearly no more pleased at being addressed by his first name than his nickname but says nothing.

Gus slips his hand into Murph’s much larger paw while Donnie hangs on to his other arm. The older man’s fingers only clench around his when the stretcher jolts–which is pretty often. Or when the porters change; the eight men are trying to manage it for a quarter of a mile in two groups of two but it’s obviously tough going. Though Mengele seems to think it’s good therapy for them. The vet slips back once his turn is over to try and talk with Gus.

“How did you get the scar?” the vet asks him.

“Werewolf,” Gus replies. “I was careless,” which was being hard on himself.

“Right–I can’t believe I’m saying this but that almost makes sense now.”

Gus wants to make sure the men all know one another. He’s most concerned about Donnie. The teenager whispers in his ear that no one is going to believe them so he doesn’t have to worry about them talking. Gus nods and says that’s the real reason they should only talk about it among themselves. He’s no therapist but he’d guess that the more they can talk about it with each other, the easier it will be to leave it behind. He calls Meng’ over and asks if he can give them a talk about how to deal with being mind-raped.

“Like I haven’t got enough to do?”

“They’ll listen to you,” Gus insists. “You’re a doctor, well kind of, and even though you’ve got nothing even resembling a bedside manner, you sound–and I find this really hard to admit–authoritative.”

Donnie nods and says to tell them they have to talk about it. Because the pressure not to do that will be enormous.

“Who are you going to talk to?” Meng’ asks him.

“Steve. He’s my dad’s cousin. He’s okay; we can talk.”

Gus nods at that.

“And, dude, we owe you, you know?” Donnie addresses Gus.

“So no hard feelings about the knife?” Gus asks Donnie. “I really couldn’t think of another way.”

“Dude, do you know what it was going to do? What it was going to get me to do? It was like beyond sick. So yeah, thanks for saving me, us, from that, really, dude. Even if it hurt like shit, the knife I mean.”

Steve takes the strain of helping Donnie along to give Gus a rest. The others leave him in peace as well. At last he has a chance to really listen to the woods around him. Sure enough, there’s birdsong. At first it’s faint but the more he listens, the more there is. From high up in the high branches and from the lower ones as well. Chirps, warbles, screeches, peep-peep, ripples of song and piping sounds–it’s all there. He sees a bluebird flash between the thin trees on his left. There’s a slight pressure in his hand then from Murph who manages to turns his head to look at him; he must be feeling a little better and absently Gus brushes the hair away from the other man’s forehead. He’s still white as a bone but his eyes seem brighter. He whispers something and Gus has to bend down to hear as he repeats it:

“Your _Consone_ really wasn’t bad, son.”

“Considering the idiot who taught me, that’s a miracle,” Gus snaps back.

It didn’t seem patronising and though he’s pleased by what amounts to almost an endearment from Murph, for a moment it makes him think of the person he thinks could be his father… singing. Even if he can’t remember what he looked like, maybe he can recall his voice. Gus isn’t sure whether that makes him sad or happy, or both. And that’s when the fear hits him. From one moment to the next.  His heart stops and his legs turn to jelly and he staggers and almost falls over the stretcher. His gorge rises and he’s terrified he’s going to spew all over Murph.

“You okay, dude?” Jerry asks from behind him.

The terror forces him to let go of Murph’s hand. He sits in a crouch at the side of the trail, tucking his head between his knees and taking deep slow breaths while counting to ten and then doing it again. His whole body is shaking and the dizziness makes him feel he is toppling over. And then Meng’ is there. The doc tells him to get up and keep walking.

“Natural reaction,” is his only comment. “It’ll pass, and more quickly if you stay on your feet.”

Gus does what he is told; the ground feels a little more solid now and he moves up to the mid-point of the stretcher and takes Murph’s hand again. He can see his fingers trembling still. And his breathing has become shallow and rapid once more so he makes a conscious effort to slow it down as he walks. Murph is whispering to him again and he’s leery of bending over but does so anyway.

“It’ll come again but it won’t be as bad. And maybe again after that but it will keep getting weaker. It’s really a good thing though it feels like shit.”

Gus nods.

Jerry pats him on the back of his shoulder.

“Reckon it’s the price you pay for not feeling it back then,” the hunter says.

“Why’s it a good thing?” Gus asks Murph.

“You need to work that out for yourself,” his teacher replies and his voice is definitely stronger if still hard to hear. “Oh and by the way, Gus,” Murph adds, “the test thing…”

“Yeah?”

“You passed.”

“No shit,” Gus says with a sour smile.

*

They’re all bone weary when they finally make it back to the road, though Gus has managed to cajole Meng’ into calling ahead about the amulets. The leader of the chapter meets them by the edge of the road in what feels like a blizzard of falling leaves. It’s still summer and there’s something a little eerie about the way the trees seem so intent on shedding their canopies. The dust is irritating Meng’s eyes but he stands firm throughout the blazing row that ensues.  In the end there’s not much the head honcho can do when Meng’ and Gus take their amulets off to give to Donnie and Steve except hand his own over to one of the former hosts and get the other instructors to do the same.

Only then there’s Murph to think about, and the hunters insist they don’t have to wait with them for the transport the team has arranged to take them back to their trucks. And while they’d both prefer to hang around for the new set of stones on its way from Green River, Gus gets into the passenger seat of Meng’s SUV once they’ve laid Murph out on the back seat and strapped him in. Donnie knocks on the window; Gus winds it down so they can bump fists. He’s all but certain he’ll never see any of them again.

Meng’ floors it to get them as far away as possible from the place and any passing demons. They say nothing for the next couple of hours. Gus can tell Meng’ is fuming at not having the protection of the stones. Murph starts groaning again in the central part of the state, so the healer decides it’s better to go for a laparascopic appendectomy now while they still can, though they’ll have to make a run for it when the fake insurance papers are discovered. So it looks like they’ll be stuck for a while in Lander. They sleep that night–after the operation–in the SUV outside the hospital. Though the next morning, while Meng’ is concocting a plan to steal his teacher out the back door as soon as he’s stolen the pain-killers and antibiotics Murph needs, Gus manages to find a store in the town dealing in crystals and healing gems. He hasn’t a clue which ones to get so he asks the shop owner straight out and leaves the shop with a moss agate for Murph and one for himself and a carnelian for the healer. All three stones have been threaded on cords and he makes his way back to the hospital only twenty-five dollars the poorer. Meng’ almost visibly relaxes the moment he puts his new amulet on. They skedaddle in the early evening after Gus has first _Lugubre’d_ and then manually tweaked the CCTV in the car park and once they’ve stolen Murph out through the laundry. He sits in the back, keeping the patient as upright as he can while he rests, and they drive through the night like that back to camp.

      

***

There’s a woman outside the cabin door and standing beside her looking uncharacteristically nervous is Meng’. She’s tall and slim and middle-aged, maybe forty-five, maybe fifty. Just for a moment it feels unnervingly like the demon stand-off, but then he asks them in. There isn’t really anywhere comfortable to sit. She offers him her hand and they shake.

“Maggie,” she says.

“Gus,” he replies.

“Maggie’s the coordinator for the north-west, for all our chapters in the north west, Gus,” Meng’ says.

Gus offers her his silver knife once he’s opened up a little cut on the side of his forefinger.

“I admire your caution,” she says to him as she returns the favour.

“You crossed the salt line, and the traps in my rafters and beneath the rug don’t seem to have had any effect on you, or him for that matter, so that should do it,” he says with a shrug.

“I’d like to invite you to come with me to our base in Washington, Gus,” she announces without further ado.

That doesn’t come as a surprise but he still has no idea what to do. He’d retreated to the cabin his foster parents left him once they’d got Murph back in camp. He is in no doubt about why he did that. It’s not so much that he needs to be on his own, though he does, as that for once he can be–his training has come to a halt. No one seems to want to tell him what to do.  And his awareness has been expanding ever since he cast _Gaudio_ –his mind has been slowly filling with spellcraft, and what was once impossibly difficult feels possible now though not necessarily easy. He knows so much more; he can do so much more, even though he still doesn’t seem to have much juice. In any case he’s been thinking...

“I’d like to talk with you about closing down this chapter and replacing it with something that works,” he replies, a bit taken aback by his own audacity.

“There is a lot of concern about the way this particular unit has been managed but that isn’t immediately relevant to my mission, I’m afraid,’ she says with a regretful smile.

“In that case, no, I’m not coming,” Gus replies.

“Gus,” Meng’ tries to get in. ‘You can’t just…’

He just snorts.

“I do realise that the events of the last few days must have had a powerful affect on you, Gus…” she goes on.

“So you’re not willing to listen. It’s just it’s been brought home to me that this organisation is not as egalitarian as I thought. If you really don’t care about the foot soldiers, then I’ve been deceived and coming with you would be a waste of your time and mine.”

“Our resources are extremely limited,” she says placatingly.

“And you intend focusing them on the few people who you think might be really useful?”

“It’s a bit more complicated than that,” she tries again.

“Really? Because I get the feeling you’re quite willing to allocate a lot of those precious resources to me–or else you wouldn’t have made the journey here. And making sure that the disaster at Devil’s Gate doesn’t happen again is a much lower priority. Besides, it’s a criminal waste of talent to leave Mr Forsythe here–and before you start he’s no friend of mine, we’ve been at daggers drawn since I was fifteen. Doesn’t mean I can’t see he’s a formidable healer who could do a lot more good elsewhere. And while we’re on the subject Murph is the single best teacher I’ve come across and you’ve got him languishing in a backwater.”

“I’d heard you weren’t a team player?” she said, raising her eyebrows.

He nods at that.

“You heard right,” and then adds, “though I might be more of one if there was anything to salvage here.”

“You won’t reconsider? This kind of opportunity is unlikely to crop up again.”

“You’ve got to be fucking kidding me. I didn’t sign up so I could qualify for an ‘opportunity’, I signed up, or at least I thought I did, for a cause I believed in,” He throws his hands in the air in disgust. “Yup, call me naïve, why don’t you?”

There’s a long, embarrassed silence

“Look, I’d like you to leave,” Gus goes on. “When you’re willing to listen, I’ll be willing to talk with you again. At the moment you’ve got nothing to offer me.”

She nods. Meng’ is pale.

“I’d like you to go too, doc.”

“Okay,” Meng’ acknowledges with a heavy heart.

 

*

The next person to turn up is Murph.

“You realise no one ever comes to this cabin, I mean, like ever. And suddenly…” Gus says. “Anyway please come in.”

The guy’s obviously ill at ease. Gus motions him over to the chair by the fireplace and sits on the edge of the bed opposite him.

“How’s the…wound?” he asks. “I went in to see you only a couple of days ago but you were out of it. I was planning on going back to camp tomorrow cos the nurse told me you’d be there for at least a couple more days.”

“Didn’t burst,” Murph replies. “No septicaemia. Just the reaction to the operation to deal with you know–having your guts interfered with. I’m going to take it easy for the next few days. But it’s all healing up nicely.”

“So why have you been sent to see me–made to leave your sick-bed as well by the look of things?” Gus persists. He doesn’t want to be unkind, particularly not to Murph’, but this feels like he’s being set up.

“Things are moving, Gus. Anyway I’m pumped full of painkillers and other good stuff and Meng’ is waiting for me a way up the lane.”

Gus gets up, throws open the door and yells,

“Meng’, get in here.”

He leaves the door open and sits back down on the edge of the bed, ignoring Murph and then thinks he should get him some water. The scar is itching like mad. He gets up when Meng’ comes in and offers him the spot on the bed. He retreats into the kitchen and comes out with a stool and a glass of water for Murph. He places the stool with his back to the cabin door so he can look at them both without having to keep turning his head.

“Speak,” he says to Meng’.

“They’re sending out a real bigwig next. I’m being transferred to California, to Stanford, so as I can audit some of the med classes and medic two of our chapters in the central part of the state at the same time. And someone is forgetting he’s the junior partner here.”

Gus nods but says nothing.

“They’re going to reconfigure the whole setup in Montana and shut this chapter down.”

“And this is conditional?” Gus asks.

“No, I don’t think so,” Meng’ replies.

“Right then,” Gus says. “So you want me to do what?”

“Whatever’s best for you, Gus,” Murph says.

Gus sighs.

“What I want is some kind of assurance, you know, that they’ll really make an effort to stop this happening again. Is that so dumb?” He appears to consider his own question and then adds, “Only what I really want is for this ‘organisation’ of ours to turn out to be what I thought it was. Something worth fighting for. Though all that grandstanding on my part was a bit over the top. I mean I realised afterwards I did sign on for an opportunity: to do something I I believed in. The old chapter was okay, you know, Murph–I mean you weren’t there. But this one... Not by a long shot.”

“So how you going to change things, Gus, if you refuse to be part of the action?” Murph asks.

“When did I do that?”

“You keep setting the bar higher and you’re the one who’ll lose out,” Murph says.

“In what way?”

“You’ll lose out on the training, the opportunities you’re so keen to get for Meng’ and me.”

Gus nods at the truth of that.

“It’s mostly because you told me I had to come back, Murph.” Gus says suddenly sounding younger and more vulnerable before steeling his resolve and continuing. “Because that got me thinking afterwards about what I was supposed to come back to. It took a while for it to kind of filter through that my value on the board had changed. And that now maybe I could have a say in getting things changed. But you’re reading me wrong if you think what I want is about some kind of advancement. They can send me to the back end of the country if they need to.”

“Thought we were already there,” Meng’ counters to a wry grin from Gus. “Only that’s not very likely, is it? You being a loremeister in all but name and barely twenty.”

“Spose not,” Gus admits, part of him would like to tell his two friends that the lore has ‘passed’ and he has been a loremeister de facto and de jure ever since that day in the woods but he can sense that now is not the time. “And another thing, there’s got to be a way we can do more for the hosts, you know instead of just leaving them mind-raped and having to fend for themselves. I mean I get it we don’t have the personnel or the resources but it’s at least something we could work towards. Like having goals?”

 

***

A couple of weeks later and Murph asks him round for a drink. Gus turns up at the apartment his former teacher has been renting from a local scrollworker. The first thing he does is ask Murph if he’s healed okay. The other man nods and pulls up his shirt to show him the tiny fading scar. The place is a dump but it’s clean. Murph has trimmed his beard which is kind of a surprise cos he’s doesn’t seem to care much about his appearance; he’s really pale and has lost a little weight. He’s rangy and spare but being tall, there’s a lot of him. Long arms and legs, powerful shoulders. He looks like he’d be at home in the forest, Gus thinks, and not bothered in the slightest by getting leaves stuck in his hair. Which is thick and lustrous and a warm brown. He’s got an interesting face: large wide-spaced pale blue eyes that seem to stare from beneath those bushy eyebrows, a big blunt nose and a rather finely shaped mouth–though he must have trimmed his moustache too cos Gus hadn’t noticed his lips before . As Gus walks past him into the living room from the front door, he’s a bit taken aback to discover he actually finds Murph appealing. While it’s true he’d felt fond of him before: on the trip back from the Trap when he was injured but that had been more the way he’d feel if he had to care for a dog who was sick. You can keep telling yourself that, Gus, only this is different, he admits to himself; and immediately he feels a little uncomfortable.

“You got your assignment yet?” Murph asks.

“Yup,” Gus replies. “But I’m not allowed to give out any details. Uh… sorry about that. What about you? Please tell me they’re moving you on?”

“Looks like it. They’re talking re-training ‘to make better use of my talents,’” Murph announces.

“Is that good?”

“Not complaining. Besides I’m getting out of here, out of the state too. Based in Oregon most likely. I made some dinner. You want some?”

“What is it?” Gus asks a little anxiously.

“Stew,” is all Murph answers.

“You mentioned a drink?”

“I got whisky and wine. No beer.”

“I forgot to bring anything. Sorry. Been so hectic, I didn’t think. Actually that’s not true–I just didn’t think–so I am, sorry I mean.”

“How about some whisky now and we can have the wine with the stew?”

“Sounds good.”

The whisky is awesome. Peaty and clear with a hint of smoke.  It tastes clean, but there’s a slightly rough edge to it as well that probably means it was illicitly distilled. Gus decides to limit himself to the one glass though he’d like more. There’s just a single lumpy couch that looks straight into the bedroom; all Gus can see is a neatly made double in there. Murph closes the door and then goes and sits on the couch at the other end to Gus. If he’s going to have any kind of conversation with his host, Gus is going to have to twist round every time. So he takes his shoes off and turns his upper body and lifts and crosses his legs so his back is against the armrest and he is looking at the other man. Murph nods in approval and does the same. His legs are so much longer his feet are almost touching Gus’.

“So what made your mind up for you, kiddo? What did the new bigwig have to tell you?”

Gus just looks back at him with raised eyebrows.

“Still ten years older than you even if I’m not your teacher anymore,” Murph explains; he pauses and then adds, “But you’re right, I won’t call you that again.”

Gus leans back against the arm rest and looks at Murph; he’s clearly wondering how to frame his answer. Eventually he shrugs and comes out with:

“The slow war thing.”

“Right. Yeah - that’d do it,” Murph responds.

“For now we’re just a ragbag army fighting the odd skirmish a long way away from the real action,” Gus explains even though he may be preaching to the choir. “Our time is at least ten years away, maybe twenty, as she admitted; there are other players in the game and they’re where the action is right now. What we got to do is prepare–that’s all we can do–so we’re ready when the time comes. Small-scale, minor battles, grunt work like a guerrilla force–just picking off the enemy one by one, picking at the scabs, finding out their weaknesses.  Staying true to our hunter roots in that way is what will get us through…”

Gus pauses and looks over at Murph who appears to be not the least surprised by what he has heard though it had come as news to him.

“The killer punch, though, Murph, was what she said about lore. That’s the bit where our path diverges from our…uh…forebears. And she reminded me that there are a lot of hunters out there who’d waste me for what I did in that clearing. Not the exorcism but the spell obviously…”

“Yeah, I can think of a few–the Winchesters come to mind obviously. There was a time I might even have thought the same way,” Murph admits and then asks after a brief pause: “She a scrollworker?”

“Don’t think so; a witchfinder, if I was forced to guess, and there was more than a hint of white witch about her,” Gus replies.

“Let’s just keep that to ourselves,” the other man warns.

“I hear you. We’re really rank amateurs when it comes to lore, she couldn’t have made that any clearer, and even if we’re getting some help from the white witches, there’s a hell of a long road ahead. And what she said about needing to nurture every scrap of talent ‘we’ have finally made sense. Anyway… she didn’t spend much time on my other objections. Just said it was all true, everything I’d said. And we’ll be keeping out of Devil’s Gate for a long time to come. Those ‘other forces’ had been in play and it wasn’t a fight we couldn’t win right now. God, Murph, I gotta tell you that really made me itch with curiosity. I heard a rumour it was hunters that broke the trap, you know–I mean our kind of ‘hunters’. In any case the idea is that they need to start my ‘real’ training now just so there’s a chance I’m ready to be an even okay, you know, uh… resource in ten year’s time–that kind of swung it for me. Though if I’m honest it was mostly the woman herself, you know, her attitude. I didn’t feel she was working me, like playing me, maybe that’s just how good she was. I brought up my dyslexia and she said they had ways of working round that only she didn’t elaborate.”

Gus falls silent and looks at his feet. There’s the sound of an ambulance racing down the wet street outside. It’s not that warm inside. Autumn in Montana can be on the chilly side though it’s usually pretty dry and anyway winter’s not far off. He’s already looking forward to the move. And then he remembers,

“Uh…she… Rosamund…said you’d given me a glowing assessment and you’d already tried to draw me to their attention before the test thing. So thanks, Murph.”

“Just doing my job,” he responds with a shrug.

The silences between them seem to stretch but even so Gus finds them comfortable. He doesn’t have to cast around for something to say. Murph appears to be content to wait.

And Gus realises he no longer feels intimidated by whatever he was feeling for his teacher and that he’s actually starting to relax.

“‘Turns out that first one they sent set a lot of the changes I’d…uh…mentioned  in motion as soon as she got back–the ones they could afford anyway. Can I get some more of your ‘whisky’?”

Murph just hands him the bottle. His hands really are huge but his fingers are surprisingly long, almost elegant.

“Only listen to this, Murph, the tattoo thing is real. Better than amulets. We’ll all be getting them in due course and she said we’ll be able to give them to the hosts… once we’ve got some kind of treatment system up and running. She admitted that was five years away at least. And then as she pointed out most of the hosts don’t survive in any case.”

“Can they do anything about your scar. The scarring from the werewolf?” Murph asks at that point.

“Didn’t come up. Not a priority as far as I’m concerned,” Gus says as he takes a swig.

“It’s honourable,” Murph states with simple directness. “Does it bother you?”

Gus takes him time before answering that, savouring the smoky tones of the liquor.

“It itches like crazy, so yeah, but other than that and the cramp having claw marks across half my face puts on my sex life… not really.’

“You come from a long line of hunters, like me?” Murph asks eventually.

“Yup. Though I’m all that’s left. The runt of the litter.”

“Some of them, maybe lots of them, would have been clawed in the course of their lives. Disfigured. Maimed.”

“Yup. I reckon I got off lightly.”

“S’not what I meant, Gus. I just mean it’s an honourable wound and it honours them.”

Gus just nods.

Murph stares at him for several long moments before adding,

“The stoic thing is honourable too, I suppose, but it might just be misguided.”

“Don’t get me wrong,’ Gus chuckles, ‘I’d probably complain a bit more if there was any one to listen, you know, if anyone was interested.”

Though as he says it he knows it’s not true and Murph snorts.

“You’re right, Murph, that’s not it. The truth is I really can’t see the point. Moaning’s not gonna change anything,” and he feels just a little sad as he admits that.

 

The stew’s delicious. No vegetables apart from the potatoes and carrots in the stew itself. And he’s not sure what the meat is but it falls apart in his mouth and he can taste sage and lemon and rosemary and a faint hint of garlic. He has a second helping.

“You like your stew,” Murph says.

“Favourite food,” Gus says. “I really love meat but I don’t like fried food much.”

They’ve drunk the bottle of wine Murph put on the table in the little kitchen.

“More whisky?” Murph asks, offering him the bottle, once they’re back on the couch.

Gus shakes his head but accepts it the second time it’s offered.

“We could do something about the sex thing,” Murph says out of nowhere. “Now you’re no longer my student, I mean.”

“Then I need to drink some water,” Gus says, suddenly very serious indeed.

Murph snorts again.

“I’ll take a pity fuck and gladly,” the younger man announces, standing up. “Only the light has to stay on and you’re not putting a bag on my head.”

Murph laughs so hard he falls off the couch which gives Gus time to go back into the kitchen and down two large glasses of water. He wants to be sober for this. He’s brought up short by an anxious thought and rushes back into the living room.

“Uh, I might have read you wrong, Murph…you might have meant something else?”

Murph reaches up with his long arms from where he is lying on the floor and grabs him.

“I didn’t,” he says.

And then they’re kissing on the floor. Gus hands are undoing the other man’s shirt with a nimbleness he’d be proud of some other time; right now he just wants to see flesh. His mouth moves down from Murph’s throat sucking kisses over his hairy breastbone and into his belly before moving on to tongue his navel and start working down the happy trail. Just as he gets to his belt buckle, Murph yanks him back up and sticks his tongue in his ear which is almost enough to make Gus come on the spot. Though he still finds time to think he could maybe afford that–he should be able to get it up again much more quickly than the other man, well in time for round two. And then that wicked tongue is in his other ear and strategic thinking goes straight out the window as it curls round first the lobe and then the rim before darting back in again.

“You’ve got fuck-me ears, Gus,” Murph announces breathlessly as he snakes a hand inside Gus’ belt.

“True, although,” Gus says as he works a hand round the back of the other man’s belt and inside his pants to palm one slim but very firm buttock, “that’s not the first item on my agenda.” He dips his face into the hollow in Murph’s throat and sucks the tender flesh there as he tries to explore more of the other man’s rear. But then pulls his hand out in frustration and puts both his hands to work on the buckle at the front. Murph returns the favour with a fervent groan as Gus reaches inside his fly to grab him. They yank down each other’s pants as they heave themselves up and roll back onto the couch although Gus refuses to let go.

“Showered before I left to come over,” Gus whispers.

“Me too,” the older man says back. “Maybe an hour ago.”

Gus tries to say good, but it’s hard with their tongues in each other’s mouths and one of his hand’s wrapped firmly round though not all the way round Murph’s cock while the other’s man fingers are working their way between his cheeks.

 

It doesn’t end in tears but on the bed and with a couple of very satisfied smiles. Gus is debating whether he should go home once they’ve cleaned up with the towel under the pillow. They’re lying on their backs under the comforter when Murph asks if he’d be happy to spend the night. There’s no mistaking the insistent sound of rain against the window-pane. Though that’s only part, a very small part, of why he’d like to stay.

“More than happy, Murph, I’d be…yeah, I’d love to stay.”

Gus yawns and then turns round to face the other man who surprises him by tenderly kissing the scarred side of his face.

“Doesn’t take much to please you, does it?” Murph says brushing his lips across Gus’ exposed ear.

“You know me, teach–I can make a little go a long way; besides, I’m called for joy, right?”

 

Murph gets out of bed and comes back with a couple of tees and a pair of boxers each cos despite the heat they generated, there’s a chill in the apartment and the comforter’s not going to be enough. Gus wrestles them off the other man first thing the next morning.

    


	7. The Me of Weariness Part One

**Chapter Seven:The _Me_ of Weariness Part One**

**Early Fall, 2032, near Stanford**

 

Through the kitchen window Sam is keeping a watchful eye on Gus who is dozing on the lawn in the back yard; he has pushed aside the garden chair and is lying on the grass with his head in the shade cast by the white yarrow bushes in Nell’s herb bed and at a supposedly safe distance from the jacket she buried beneath the asphodel. Bird made them all toasted cheese sandwiches for lunch and then left immediately afterwards with his sister in the car to get some essentials for the upcoming trip to Montana along with shopping for the family; Sam would have gone but there was some work stuff he needed to sort out and then succeed in delegating before they head out. Nell had made it clear to him that they wouldn’t be leaving until after lunch the next day at the very earliest in order to ensure that Gus got three more meals inside him before the forty-eight hours were up. The douche already looks a lot better he thinks before wincing mentally at the use of that word; the truth is he has actually started to share his daughter’s concern about the health of their guest even if he happens to forget every now and then that he actually kind of likes the guy. Truth to tell, absent the whole Dean thing, he would never have had a real problem with him. He’d even smiled indulgently when he came out of his office just before lunch to find Gus jamming with Bird just beyond the room on the other side of the hall. Gus had ear protectors on but was playing a small pair of tablas with the heels of his hands and his fingers in almost perfect accompaniment to the beat Bird had just finished setting up on his more traditional electronic drum set. His eyes were closed and from his expression he was blissed out, moving his body gently to the constantly shifting rhythms they were creating. Then Bird rolled a conga, a big one, away from the wall and started playing on it even faster while the e-kit kept up the backing beat; Gus didn’t seem to struggle to keep pace.  After a few minutes with the beat getting faster and faster, the music was verging on the ecstatic, it seemed like a shamanic rite to Sam; the sound felt like it was running through his body making every cell vibrate while he just stood there, in a trance almost, for ten minutes or more until a tiny creak made him aware that Nell was sitting on the stairs–presumably she’d been there the whole time. She gave him the thumbs up; maybe he had heard her telling Bird or even Gus that music was good therapy as it helped to integrate body and mind, but then he had to look back into the music room because something was telling him to. He couldn’t work out what the signal had been afterwards–maybe Gus faltered momentarily before continuing. The other man opened his eyes right then and looked across at Sam; he stopped playing and nodded kind of urgently at him. Sam made it in three to four strides and caught him just as he pitched forward– fast asleep. “Thanks for saving my _tablas_ , pops,” Bird quipped. “I’d have caught him but I could see you were on it.” Sam stayed on the floor with Gus; he’d ended up having to cradle the other man more or less while he leant against the wall of the music room for what felt like an hour but was barely more than five minutes this time–until their guest came to and declared he was starving before realising whose arms were around him and falling silent in embarrassment.

There was another long silence in the kitchen when Nell offered Gus her phone if he needed to call anyone. He clearly had to think about it but eventually he just said, “The Watch, actually.” But he insisted on going upstairs to find his bag with the phone in, only then he had to quick-charge it so it was almost time for the meal when he was able to get through. A bit shamefacedly Gus had to confess to there being months of messages and texts backed up on his phone and then one caught his eye. He apologised and stepped away from the table to make the call. “Speedwell?” he said after saying who he was and that he was returning the other person’s call. “No, that doesn’t mean anything? Are you sure your contact said that? Yeah, sorry I’ve been ill but let me get back to you once I’ve had a moment to think. Okay?”

So then he called the Watch after explaining to the three of them that they might recognise Nell’s phone and he had felt it best to call from his to avoid any questions about who he was with. He gave the Watchman on duty his name and apparently got passed on immediately to someone more senior. “Really sorry but I’ve got to make this short as my health is still poor. I’m not ready for active duty yet but I...give me another two weeks and I will give you a full briefing either in Stanford or in Billings; I should think I can go back to work for the C in a month. Once I have your confidence of course.” And then he snapped his fingers and looked all excited and just told the Watchman he had to go, and he apologised again and said he had to make one more call even though his toasted cheese was waiting for him on his plate. “I think my sister referred to my grandma, my paternal grandmother, as Grandma Speedy,” he told whoever he’d been speaking to before. “Anna might have said she, our grandma, refused to take her husband’s surname when they got married. I don’t think I ever met her and I don’t know what her first name was but after I just spoke to you I suddenly had this memory of her being talked about when I was young, and her name could have been Speedwell so that’s something. Right...yeah. So you’re not expecting them to get back to you any time soon...okay...Anyway I will be able to keep in touch a lot better now. Thanks a lot and I hope this leads somewhere. I’m really looking forward to hearing from you again.” He didn’t say anything else after the call but nodded at the three of them and then tucked into his sandwich, groaning with pleasure; only then he felt it necessary to explain that he didn’t think that the Watch had bought his story for a moment but he would have another two to three weeks before he had to face the music. He didn’t seem the slightest bit worried. Good at compartmentalizing? was Sam’s thought, or maybe he’s got enough on his plate just surviving?  So then Bird made Gus another round of toasted cheese before hurrying after Nell who was already clambering into Sam’s car. When Sam got back to the kitchen, it was empty and it was only when he took a look in the yard that he discovered Gus lying on the lawn and left him there to sleep.

And then they get back and Sam is displaced at the window by his daughter. Bird makes a token effort to help his father unload the car but plainly can’t keep away from Gus for long.

Her brother has just re-entered the kitchen and comes over to stand beside her. “I’d let you take over,” Nell says, “but you’d probably tell him about the snakes.”

Bird looks at her in fake astonishment and then pulls something out of his pocket and holds it out to her. It’s the coin.

“I washed it three times in bleach,” he says with a shrug. She takes it from him without flinching. “Besides there was only the one, like ten years ago? True, it scared the crap out of me then.  I think you did something because they’ve never dared come back.” It’s her turn to shrug, maybe she did, maybe she didn’t, she can’t really remember. And then it occurs to her that she’ll have to take steps to ensure no snake ever returns if her baby is going to be on that lawn. Probably best to talk to one of the Sisters, after all they have an affinity: the Sisters and snakes. Not something that has to be solved immediately though and there is something about the coin...

It is very old indeed. That comes as a surprise even though she knows that there are an astonishing number of coins from the ancient world still in existence. The text around the rim is illegible and the features of the head have been worn away. The metal is definitely bronze and that could just possibly be a bird maybe even an owl on the tail side, then again it might be a horse rearing? More likely Greek than Roman would be her guess. And as far as she can recall from the lore the older the coin the more potent it is as both lure and prompt.

“He wants to tackle the jacket as in decontaminate it or something?”Bird mentions quietly, before adding: “The curse is gone though, right? So he could just burn it. I don’t get it.”

“I think it’s the Dead Guy’s,” Nell says and then wishes she hadn’t. “I mean Uncle Dean’s.”

“Oh my God, you mean it’s...like...the... jacket  jacket?” Bird replies in a tone of awe.

“Oh please...and so what...it’s a garment...but since it’s not his, Gus’s I mean, I’m assuming he just feels he’s got to return it.”

Bird looks meaningfully at her belly.

“Fine,” is all she answers with a small scowl. Bird motions towards one of the chairs around the kitchen table so she moves across the room and sits down slowly. Her brother knows to put the water on to boil for some herb tea. She positions her phone in the centre of the table and tells it to project the image she captured from the back of the jacket pocket the day before onto the wall behind the table. This involves some kind of collaboration between her communication device and the house system. She places a finger on the phone while subvocalising an instruction to the house to enlarge the image so that it spreads across most of the free space.

 They both turn towards the door to the hall as they hear their father groaning under the weight of the shopping bags.

“He’s a wizard, I think,” Nell says.

“As in a loremeister who is technically proficient but rather underpowered?” Bird responds quizzically.

“It’s like being an opera singer with a voice that is too small to fill a concert hall so they tend to become really expert at all the aspects that don’t require a lot of what Gus himself called ‘juice’,” Nell replies... Sam happens to hear the explanation as he finally comes into the kitchen and more or less drops the bags on the floor.

“You got that, pops, or do you need help?” Bird mutters as he moves rather reluctantly to help him. “The wizard thing?” Sam asks. “Presumably,” he goes on to say, “that means that he’s even weaker right now and is likely to remain so until he gets his mojo back? And how long’s that gonna take?”

“After five months of sustained supernatural assault? Weeks, months? Maybe never?” Nell replies, sounding worried. “His mental faculties are recovering but then he’s had some help with that. On the other hand, the crashes should stop happening by tomorrow or the day after. He’ll still get very tired quickly but provided he keeps resting he won’t lose consciousness from one moment to the next.”

Her father is gazing at the image while looking a bit distracted.

“Frankly, Dad,” Nell says sharply, “I am not sure how much use he is going to be defending you and your brother.”

Her father just nods, turns towards the sink and then gets on with making her tea since her brother is otherwise occupied. Looking out the window, he lets his daughter know that Gus seems to be waking up and then he snaps his fingers by his chin as if he had remembered something.

“You’re taking Bird to his test the day after tomorrow, right? I could get Todd to maybe if it was inconvenient...though since we’re discussing Dean and me, our first job is going to have to be to break the curse...” Sam says with a shrug while staring out at the garden.

Bird transfers the tea from Sam’s hands to the table in front of his sister and then joins his father at the window: “He’s heading back to the house.”

 

“That is the _Me_ of Weariness,” the grave voice belongs to Gus who is standing in the doorway with bits of grass stuck in his hair and pointing at the centre of the image, “it was stolen by Inanna, the Queen of Heaven, more than five thousand years ago for her temple in Uruk, which was at the time the greatest city in the world.” His brown hair even has a slight curl to it, Sam thinks only half-listening, while taking in how much better he looks this afternoon. His more grey than blue eyes are clear and his posture seems freer; he is still wearing the blue jade around his neck; according to Nell the sapphire is probably hidden against the artery on the underside of his wrist. There is a grass stain on his right cheek with maybe a bit of soil as well because it looks a bit like a bruise when he suddenly smiles. Sam is momentarily stunned by how attractive that kind of animation makes him; though when he thinks about it that is actually the most Gus-like thing about him: his animation, the expressiveness of his features.

“I mean that is a representation, an eidolon, of the _Me_ of Weariness at the centre of the image...” Gus goes on to explain, looking even more serious now. The way Sam is staring at him feels like a challenge, one he doesn’t feel up to at the moment. Aware that Sam is distracted by something, Nell asks Gus to repeat the stuff about Inanna. He does so with a sigh. And then tells them he needs to take a really long look at the image while not focusing too intently on it. Maybe he could join Nell at the table while they all talk about something else.

“So you want to come at it sideways on?” Sam asks just to be sure he had understood. Gus just nods as he pulls out a chair. Sam and Bird join them at the table as well. There’s silence for a good minute before Bird decides he can’t keep quiet any longer:

“This family has a secret vice.”

Gus refuses to look away from the image.

“Only one?”

“Okay, only one that is major,” there is a pause and then, “Do you speak Klingon?” he asks their guest.

“HIja'. loQ vIjatlhlaH,” Gus replies as he leans forward to peer at some detail. “I mean I wouldn’t claim to be fluent but I can manage a conversation. A fairly restricted conversation. Heghlu’meH QaQ jajvam has, of course, become a standing phrase among younger members of the C.”

Sam looks to his daughter for an explanation

“Today is a good day to die,” she explains.

“So the vice isn’t Klingon?” Gus asks with a tip of his head at Sam.

“No, it’s Star Trek,” Nell replies, “it’s only Bird who can bore forever in Klingon.”

“The original series?”

Bird mimes outrage. “Rude.”

Gus goes on, clearly not entirely focused on the conversation, “Got it, a really cool person would know that any other option could never even be contemplated. I suppose I can understand that. I’d never seen an episode, unless it was as a toddler, before I started living with your uncle in...about eight years ago.”

“Is that when you become ‘partners’?” Sam asks rather pointedly.

“Nope, that would have been towards the end of 2012: the first time we met–that was only for a couple of days or so, and then I didn’t see him again for another twelve years.” Gus gets up and moves towards the back wall, where he runs a finger lightly along one of the outlines in the image. He nods to himself before sitting back down again.

“Dean likes watching it from time to time but I don’t know that he takes it very seriously or that he could tell you the names of the characters even but his Klingon is much better than mine. I can’t tell you why Dean chose that word for our ‘relationship’; as in I literally cannot tell you why we are ‘partners’,” he stops speaking abruptly and takes a long look at Bird, a very long look, as if he were considering a possibility. “Until the accident I was spending maybe half to two thirds of the year living at Dean’s house depending on my teaching schedule; the rest of the time I was ‘on the road’ with what I do for the C. It was home, the first real home I’d had as an adult. But my relationship with your brother, Sam, is entirely platonic. It always has been and, apart from the fact that there has never been any kind of sexual interest between us that I’ve been aware of at least, it could never be anything but platonic because Dean is my sensei...”

Bird hi-fives his sister or tries to but her response is half-hearted. Sam is at first so astonished he can say nothing. He is also surprised he feels relieved that they, Gus and Dean, are not lovers.

“Sensei, as in your teacher in the martial arts?” he eventually asks the other man. His son rolls his eyes. Again all that gets is a nod from Gus. It doesn’t feel discourteous, more as though Gus doesn’t want to be distracted.

“Can I ask you about the Speedwell thing?” Nell decides to ask all the same.

“You can but it will have to wait for now, uh, I’m sorry,” Gus responds. “This has to take precedence.”

He takes a breath while looking at the other people in the room rather than at the image. “The eidolon has been worked into the cursed object in leaden silver: the colour of death,” Gus explains. “This has all the devious subtlety of true spite. The _Me_ are not meant for mortals; a fact the eidolon is intended to make full use of by constantly ‘reminding’ the victim, the wearer of the jacket, that just as his life is slipping away from him his hold on reality itself is slipping as well. The invocations are execrations, formed and reformed, forged and reheated until molten and liquid again before solidifying seamlessly with the material of the pocket. A very ancient process that requires great technical skill in the dark arts. The result is invisible and lethal. I have to tell you that it is highly unusual though not unheard of for witches to use magic from Mesopotamia. This is a dangerous working though and she or he would have to be extremely familiar with this kind of spellcraft to make the risk worth it. The payoff may be in just how hard it is to detect. This isn’t just witchcraft. It is the blackest of black magic...”

“Necromancy,” Sam all but whispers.

 


	8. The Cabin Part One

**Chapter Eight: The Cabin Part One**

**2012, Montana**

 

 

When he comes to, he’s in a cabin. He can hear the trees outside soughing in the wind. The place feels snug; there’s heat coming from a small woodstove he can see in the hearth. Just the one large room: the bed he’s in, a pull-out couch with dusty and rather smelly sheets. The walls are bare wood and stone, and just a bit grubby, stained by smoke. There’s a couple of tatty wooden chairs as well and some threadbare rag rugs on the floor. What looks like a desk in one corner. No sign of a phone or a television set. He can see cobwebs in the bare rafters and some odd designs up there that he can’t quite make out. A glass of water is perched on the little table beside the bed. The glass has been wedged with a book as the table is so rickety it tilts alarmingly. There’s a small bookcase on the other side but his eyes hurt and even if he could angle his head right he wouldn’t be able to decipher any of the titles. It’s not just his eyes. His entire skull feels bruised and his neck is so sprained he can’t lift himself off the pillow, which is only just high enough to let him scan the room. It hurts to breathe, not badly but there’s pressure on his lungs. In the middle of the wall on his left is a window with two much smaller ones on either side of the door. A slightly larger one is set strangely high on the wall to the right in an alcove on the far side of the hearth.  A thin greyish daylight is coming through the net curtains that cover the panes. Dusk isn’t far off. A little extra illumination is provided by a standard lamp on the near side of the fireplace next to the wooden shelf that runs as a sort of mantelpiece above it. He needs to pee but there’s no way he can get up. He tries to shout but what comes out is a pained gasp. Steps approach from behind and a man’s face looks briefly down at him. He’s got a baby’s diaper in one hand. The man lifts the blanket and sheet covering him and tucks the diaper around his junk. He smiles wryly at him. He goes away and comes back with a plastic bag and a wet cloth. He plumps the pillow beneath Dean’s head and goes over to the couch and sits down.

“Whenever you’re ready,” he says.

“For what?”

“To let go: with any luck the diaper will soak up all of it. I guess I could hold it for you so you could piss into a bottle. I tried that when you woke before but you were so out of it you pissed all over my hands just before I was due to change your dressings.”

He’s too desperate to feel embarrassed and so he finally lets go; the relief feels enormous although the flow doesn’t seem to last more than a few seconds. He grunts.

The other man gets up and comes over to stand beside him which gives Dean a chance to look him properly in the face. He’s got scar tissue all over one cheek. He gets out a silver knife and makes an incision across the meat of his hand. Red blood wells up as he says, “Christo.”

“No holy water, I’m afraid,” he goes on. “You drank the last of that. Unless there’s some left in the glass.”

Dean just looks at him.

“I was planning on saving the salt for dinner, and we’re both too dehydrated for me to drink any. So this – he points to his palm – will have to do. I’m Gus by the way. I must have told you that like ten times already. Maybe it’ll stick this time. You finished?”

Dean grunts again.

Gus lifts the blanket and whisks the diaper away. He runs a damp cloth gently but very quickly over Dean’s genitals and seems about to pop the diaper into the plastic bag when he reconsiders.

“Reckon we might even be able to use that again if I dry it out by the fire. S’not really good news though as I guess that means you’re even more dehydrated than I thought.”

Dean drifts off for a bit. When he resurfaces it’s to the clatter of rain against the windows. Night has fallen. A light attached to one of the rafters has been turned on. The man is dozing on the couch. There is a bottle of rotgut whisky on the floor at one end. The door rattles. The man comes awake instantly. He goes over to the door and leans against it, his forehead against the wood. He seems to be listening. He stays there for a long time. Then he shakes his head as if to clear it. He gets out his knife and carves a complex sign into the back of the door. He mumbles something. He turns round and sees that Dean is awake and watching him.

“Time to look at your dressings.” He gets the whisky bottle, swallows a slug and grimaces as he approaches the bed. He pours some whisky into the cap. And then pours the capful into the palm of one hand. He washes his hands very diligently with the alcohol. He peels back the sheet and lifts away the large bandage across Dean’s chest. Dean can feel it pinching the stitches as it comes away.

“Listen, the best thing would be to expose the wound to air at this point. Better than letting it get damp under a new bandage that I don’t think I have in any case. More likely to be some very unsterile sheeting. There’s no sign of renewed infection on the stitches but I would like to clean them with the whisky. You up for that?”

“How many?” Dean gasps.

“A lot,” Gus replies. “Or did you mean how many wounds? Anyway this is the important one. I’ve cleaned all your other injuries and just left them to heal as best they can. But this is the one that could kill you. I’ll stoke up the fire to keep the temperature up. But you’ve got to tell me, wake me even if I’m asleep, if you feel cold or start to shiver.” He appears to reconsider. “I could turn the bandage upside down I suppose but that isn’t really going to achieve anything. I’m sorry, dude, but the whisky is going to hurt like a son of a bitch. I’d give you some for the pain but you’ve lost too much blood.”

He pours another capful and, concentrating fiercely, lets the whisky fall drop by drop onto the stitches. Dean’s chest wound feels like it’s been laced with fire. The process seems to last an eternity. He is careful not to clench his muscles though and when the pain eventually fades, he feels a welcome lethargy start to steal over him. But his body feels warm even though the sheet is only covering him to the waist and his upper body is exposed. Gus is back on the couch, apparently asleep. He starts awake, “Fuck, I forgot to make you drink.” He comes back to the bedside and holds the glass to Dean’s lips. “The more you can make yourself swallow, my friend, the more you’ll be helping me–and you.” Dean manages to get down two gulps before he turns away. The effort feels too huge. “We’ll try again in a bit.”

But when Dean comes back from a deep sleep it is morning, and Gus is snoring on the couch. His chest feels easier and he manages to raise himself onto his elbows and lift his head off the pillow. Just for a little while. The sunlight is falling on Gus’ face. Dean is surprised by how young the other man seems. He looks as though he’s barely out of his teens. The eyes he’d looked into last night had seemed ancient. Something about his face is nagging at him. A vague sense of resemblance or he might just have seen him before. The sign on the door is new to him. Not an angel ward. There’s a demon trap scrawled up there in the rafters, he can see it more clearly in daylight. The wooden walls glisten oddly as patches of sunshine shift across them.

“Salt,” a newly-wakened Gus informs him when he sees Dean looking. “There’s salt embedded in the walls and the window-frames. Lots of salt. And in the shingles and in the ground below and outside for a yard or so from the cabin.  There are demon traps all over: under the rugs and the bed, in the roof and hidden on the walls.”

“Good,” Dean croaks.

“Yeah, only I’m not sure it’s gonna be good enough.”

There’s nothing to say to that.

Gus gets up wearily from the couch and stretches. He windmills his arms and arches his back like a cat. He comes over to inspect the stitches and grunts non-committally. He asks him about his bladder and Dean shakes his head.

“You need to poop yet?”

Dean shakes his head more forcefully.

“Don’t think I’ll be pooping anytime soon,” he says; after all he hasn’t eaten in a very, very long time.

“This may ruin my rep with you as a nurse but I’m really grateful for that small mercy.”

Gus disappears from Dean’s view. He can hear the other man moving around behind him. He takes some deep breaths; although the stitches are sore, inflating his lungs feels a tiny bit less painful than it did before. He wonders if the burning feeling is just inflammation or infection.

Gus comes back with half a glass of water that he puts down on the floor by the bed. Then he’s gone again but returns with two large jerry cans he goes and puts by the door. He sits on the side of the bed and lifts Dean’s head to help him sip the lukewarm water. He’s dressed to go out in a thick coat with lots of pockets; he’s got a large and wicked-looking knife with him.

“This is the last of the water, Dean,” he says pointing to the glass. “That means I’ve got to go down to the spring. You need it and I need it just as bad. So I’m gonna have to leave you for a bit.” He pauses.

“I’m kinda curious about how you know my name?” Dean asks.

“I saw you once, twice in fact, at the Roadhouse when I was a little kid. You and your brother,” his eyes go unfocused just for a second, “that feels like a lifetime ago.” Gus casts around for what to say, “We had to stay on our own in the car while my step-uncle got shit-faced, and the two of you turned up; let’s just say you made quite an impression. My brother told me your names.” He smiles at something, “though it’s not the same as the name on the driving license in your pocket.” He toys with the knife he is holding.

“This is for you if I don’t make it back or if I get...delayed. They shouldn’t be able to get in. But if there’s enough of them, all the salt and the wards just won’t make a difference. They should stop them from flinging you around though; and they won’t find it easy dealing with that many barriers. So you can use it on yourself or try and take some of them out. Up to you. Be a waste of all that fine nursing, though. So let’s hope it doesn’t come to that.” His tone is light, offhand, but it’s obvious to Dean there’s not all there is to it.

He slides the knife under the sheet next to Dean’s hip, out of sight but within reach.

Gus tells Dean it’s about ten minutes to the nearest spring so he should be back in thirty if there’s enough water to fill the jerry cans at the one site. Otherwise it could take longer.

“Seriously, try and be here when I get back,” he chuckles as he unlatches the door. He steps out and pulls the door shut behind him. Dean can hear the sound of a key turning in the lock and steps as they move away. It’s nagging at him, the resemblance but his mind isn’t up for trying to track down the memory. Gus is shorter than him, less well-built, and dark-haired. Though he looks like he could hold his own all the same. He moves really well, better than Dean who tends to lumber, but he holds his hands rather oddly with the fingers long and loose and the thumb turned in. Dean hasn’t noticed much else. He decides he believes the story about the roadhouse.  So Gus’s step-uncle was a hunter, not that there was any love lost there. But what’s he doing here? It’s a bit too convenient–Gus, someone who knows who he is, coming across him at just the right moment out in these godforsaken woods? If it was Gus that found him. And he’s clearly well versed in demon lore. That’s way too many coincidences for it just to be the Winchesters’ famed good fortune. The more genuine they seem, the more you like and trust them, the more evil they have a habit of turning out to be. One thing he can be sure of is that his track record on that score–who to trust–doesn’t exactly inspire confidence.  And he’s still very unsure about what he does remember of the attack. He vaguely recalls being surrounded by five of them the night before or maybe the one before that. He’s got no real idea how long he’s been here. He’d ganked two of them pretty quickly; they must have been cannon-fodder because they hadn’t managed to throw him off his feet. But the remaining three had done for him. One had clubbed him round the head while another slashed him across the chest. The third just kept kicking him when he fell. After that, and it could have been a long while afterwards but he doesn’t think so, he heard screams and saw those welcome flashes of gold fire across his closed eyelids. Then someone was turning him onto his back. A light was shone into his eyes. His jacket was done up across his chest and something like a blanket had been tied round that. He could feel rope being passed under his armpits and he was being hauled up a slope. He’d drifted in and out of consciousness at that point. The pressure on his chest had been terrible; he could feel blood pumping lazily from his wounds. Maybe he’d been picked up then but if it was Gus, that wouldn’t have been an easy ask for someone smaller and who clearly weighed quite a bit less than him, and then he’d been slung over a shoulder to the sound of some ferocious cursing. Yup, he remembers the cursing. Then again if this cabin was nearby maybe Gus could have borne his weight for a bit. Appearances could be deceptive.

The wind picks up again and he can hear it banging against the roof; the door rattles ominously. It’s still light outside though, and the brightness helps to keep his immediate fears at bay. Did I fall asleep again? he thinks. Has it been thirty minutes? He wants to pull himself up to a sitting position but when he tries, he feels blood trickling out of the line of stitches across his chest, so he stops. And he wants to pee. It’s hardly a surprise that being a patient, having to lie here unable to do anything, can make him start to fret.  But it’s annoying as hell and that makes him want to pee more. So he takes some calming breaths which of course hurts like a son of a bitch. He’s relieved at first to hear the sound of someone approaching the cabin at last. But, ever wary, he slides his hand down towards the knife; only then he recognises the cursing he’d got so familiar with the other night and there’s the sound of heavy objects being dragged across the ground and then being dropped against the outside walls. The key turns in the lock. The door opens to reveal Gus: his coat’s torn and there’s blood on his forehead. “Honey, I’m home,” he shouts gleefully.  Although he looks bedraggled and done in, there’s a new lightness to him, something weirdly carefree despite being so obviously winded. Dean’s hackles rise. And then Gus turns back to grab one of the water containers. He drags it indoors and then goes back for the other one. After that he relocks the door and hauls the containers back towards what Dean assumes is a kitchen out back.

He returns a few minutes later with the whisky bottle and shrugs off the coat. He sits at the desk and takes a mirror out of a drawer. He pours a capful of the alcohol and wipes it over his forehead with his fingers.

“Just gotta catch my breath a minute, dude, and then I’m all yours,” he says wearily to Dean, he’s still a bit breathless his previous exertions. “You still with me?”

“I’m okay.”

“Awesome.”

Gus looks as though he is about to slump across the desk. But then he remembers his bloody forehead and lies down on his back on the floor. He starts counting softly. The count gets slower as his breathing becomes less rapid. Nine...ten...one...two...three and then he is silent. All Dean can here is deep regular breaths. After another couple of minutes, Gus gets to his feet.

“The bleeding’s stopped,” Dean tells him, looking at his face.

“Superficial if very dirty,” Gus announces.

Gus asks him if needs the diaper. Dean nods. He grabs the one drying by the fireplace and fits it loosely around his patient. And nothing comes out. He looks up at Gus in frustration. “You need to drink a lot of water, although I’m guessing here.” Gus feeds him glass after small glass of the spring water. He gulps it down thirstily which is a good sign, he is told. “Might give you the shits, though that can’t be helped, anyway I am more worried you won’t be able to make the blood you need to replace what you’ve lost without it.”

“Feel like eating anything?” Gus asks him once he’s stopped drinking. Dean shakes his head. He looks enquiringly at the door. The other man tells him there were three more by the spring but they didn’t give him any trouble; he’d been able to exorcise them right there and then. It helped that he’d heard them before they’d seen him.  They must have been newbies as well. Then of course he’d had to take the victims to the highway so they could hitch into town. But that had only added another half hour.  It had all been worryingly easy. Only as he was hurrying back, he’d tripped over an exposed root and scraped his head against a tree trunk and had then fallen headlong into muddy leaves. He confesses he was glad Dean hadn’t been there to see that.

“Why ‘worryingly easy’?” Dean croaks.

“It’s just that many newbies means whoever’s in charge has got a lot of cannon-fodder to put in the field. And that we haven’t seen the serious players yet. Still a win’s a win.”

Dean asks him if he thinks more will come that night.

“Yup,” is all Gus says by way of reply. He pours out another glass for Dean and then pours another one for himself.

“It’s weird but you seem a bit more cheerful,” Dean prompts. “I mean tired of course but less uptight.”

“Uptight?”

“Dude, give me a break here–my head’s broken. Less wound up?”

“That’s true, I guess. I mean I’m very ‘concerned’ shall we say about what may be coming, but not having to kill those three just now, well, let’s just say it lightened the load.”

“Gus, did you carry me here on your own? Seriously?”

“You see anyone else around?” he smirks. “Now there was nothing easy about that. You weigh a ton, dude – it’s like you’re made of denser stuff than the rest of us. Just thinking about it makes my back ache.”

“What can I tell you – muscle weights a lot more than fat, they say,” Gus snorts at that. Then he tells him that the site where Dean was attacked is only about half a mile from the cabin. He’d had to haul him up a hillside though and that had been touch and go. After that managing to lug Dean in a fireman’s lift for five hundred yards hadn’t seemed that hard. He goes on to tell him that although it seems like they are deep in the woods, it’s only a short hike to the highway and then ten minutes ride into town. If you know how to find the way, you can even drive to a dead-end about a hundred and fifty yards from the cabin. When he’d taken the three people he’d de-demonised to the main road, he’d been tempted to hitch in with them to get his truck. But he couldn’t take the risk of leaving Dean alone any longer. “Judgment call,” Gus comments. “And maybe the wrong one.”

“You want the knife back?”

“Nah, let’s leave it there – just in case. But let’s make sure the edge of the blade is pointing outwards away from your hip, okay?”

“Don’t take this the wrong way but...?”

“This really is my cabin, Dean,” Gus interrupts him, “though I’ll admit I haven’t been here for a very long time. Make that a very, very long time. I usually let hunters (the regular kind) stay here part of the year and they keep it stocked and ...uh...clean. And I guess you’re kind of wondering just how I happened to be in the woods the night before last? I’ve got no answer for that. Nah, man, I wouldn’t trust me either. Not entirely. Only what choice do you got?” He shrugs. There’s silence between them. It feels companionable. Then a thought occurs to Gus.

“Dean, you know any weather-lore? No... well, I didn’t think so. Cos it would be really awesome if we could have clear skies tonight. It’s a full moon and we could do with all the light we can get. Anyway let’s hope the wind gets up again.”

Dean is relieved that they’ve exchanged so little personal information. Okay so he doesn’t entirely trust the guy; he’s not up to quizzing his host though, not when he’s incapable of getting out of bed. And besides, chances of their making it through the night look slim to non-existent. He thinks ruefully of the money. He’d only taken 500 dollars in one hundred dollar bills and the driver’s license before reburying the rest along with the weird selection of documents Cas had thought to supply him with. The ‘treasure’ was exactly where he said it would be. There was no time to peruse the various deeds ,locker keys and passbooks because he’d heard a branch snapping in the woods behind him and then another. If he had the energy to explain the details, he’d like to tell Gus just in case the other man gets out of this alive. He’s not getting sentimental, but it seems a shame to let over four thousand dollars go to waste. And whatever his motives, Gus has done him a major solid.

What were the demons doing though so near the spot Cas had chosen?

“Gus, I really need to thank you but whatever I try and come up with sounds inadequate considering all you’ve done. So thanks, dude.”

‘You’re welcome.’ Gus replies with a warm and easy smile.

“Listen though, I know you’ve put all this effort into saving me and like I said, I’m grateful. Only what’s the point in our both going down? So why don’t you go and get the truck before it gets dark? And come back at first light. There’s a chance they won’t find me. Heck, if I can get some sleep without you fussing over me, my chest may be a lot better tomorrow.”

Gus laughs as though Dean’s little speech is the most comical thing he’s ever heard. It’s so infectious his laughter that Dean has to smile sheepishly.

“Good try, Win... Mr Campbell. Now how about you try the diaper thing again.”

Dean realises he’s been dying to go for some time but he was distracted and now he isn’t. The relief is blessed and the flow is copious. After what seems forever he is able to nod at Gus.

“Yay – a result,” Gus cackles.

“Seriously, dude, what you got against saving your own skin?” Dean persists.

“It’s a family matter,” is all Gus will say. And it’s when he says those words that Dean realises who he reminds him of. It’s Sam. He’s a lot smaller and he’s dark-haired and blue-eyed and okay he’s disfigured but it’s there, almost, in the shape of his face and, more so, in his facial expressions - which have something of the ponderous sweetness and determination his brother manages to display so often. At a stretch Gus looks like he could be Sam’s brother, a lot more in any case than Dean ever has. Maybe he missed it because, unlike his brother, Gus is so resolutely cheerful, so open and offhand. And apparently determined not to treat Dean as more of an invalid than he is.

“Anyway, listen up, Dean, there’s two or three hours left before sundown and I need some chow. I’m going to rustle up some pasta, any chance you could get something down? I’ll make enough for two in any case. And...”

Gus purses his lips and Dean is suddenly dreading a sentimental moment–why now? he thinks. It was all going so well. And he’s vastly reassured when Gus eventually continues,

“...if it all looks hopeless tonight and you’re right maybe they won’t come who knows, but we both think they will, anyway if it does, I think I should tell you–though I really am in two minds about this–that I’ve got one last and very nasty trick up my sleeve, could be very nasty for them and maybe pretty nasty for us. But I am going to need you for it. So even if you feel like checking out, you’ll be doing me a solid by hanging on like grim death–hey, good phrase, guy–to whatever life you’ve still got inside. What I’m trying to say is that I really, really, need you to hang in there whatever happens. So on that cheerful note, I am going to make us some grub... mac and cheese okay with you?”

Dean doesn’t really have a clue what he is talking about but he nods, trying to let Gus know he is nodding more to the first request than the food thing.

“Oh and Dean,’ Gus adds as an afterthought, ‘You’re cool with exorcism, right? Only you might see me doing some other lore stuff, you know, in fact you can bank on it. All I can tell you is that none of it is darkside. Though you’re just gonna have to trust that until we’re safe enough for you to consider whether offing me is a good idea. I’m likely to disagree.”

 

He manages a bite or two of the food and then has another glass of water while Gus polishes off the rest. They say hardly anything more as they wait for darkness to fall. Thankfully the wind does pick up in the late afternoon, though the noise it makes rattling against the roof and the walls is eerie and unsettling, as though unseen forces are stirring. The trees are creaking in the gale and there’s the occasional snap of branches breaking. He watches as Gus pours water from one of the cans into as many small containers as he can find: a jug, the glasses, a couple of bowls and cups and then places them wherever he can on the floor beside the walls, under his bed and on the long shelf above the fire. He sprinkles a pinch of salt in each one and then pricks his finger so that just a drop of blood falls on to the surface of the water. _Aquas consacro cum sale et cum sanguine vitae meae_ , he whispers. He breathes into each receptacle and adds the words: _Benedico has res humiles cum spiritu meo_.  Though Dean can only make out the words when Gus is blessing the bowl he puts beneath the bed. I consecrate these waters with salt and my life’s blood. I bless these humble objects with my own breath. The vocabulary is familiar even if the phrases aren’t. He gives Gus a questioning look, as if to say God and the angels not good enough for you? “Guess, I’m not the religious type,” Gus smirks. And then he gives Dean a second look and asks, “Speaking of the god squad, there’s no one you could call, is there? It’s just, now might be a good time.” Dean shakes his head and says ruefully, “Sorry, dude, ‘that party cannot currently be reached’, he’s...uh... seriously unobtainable.”

“Ain’t that always the way,” Gus nods. “’Cept that’s partly why I tend to avoid putting my faith in your standard blessings. Plus mine are easier to remember – I have to learn them by rote. It’s the purity of the intention that counts in any case; the words are just there to help.”

The light is almost gone now. Gus draws back the net curtains that shroud the windows but draws them shut again immediately and very forcefully. Dean can hear him taking a deep breath. And then just like that they are under attack. There’s no frontal assault and no sound at first; just this pressure as though the air in the room had become incredibly heavy. Like the way you feel when a storm is brewing only a hundred times worse. Dean gasps at the weight on his chest. He sees Gus raise his hand to his ear and then drop it. And then the pressure’s gone, and an icy chill enters the cabin accompanied by an infernal din, a cacophony of voices howling and screaming. As if on cue a shaft of moonlight enters through the window by the alcove to strike the very center of the room. Gus steps forward and into it; he moves his hands in the beams almost as though he were trying to plait them. He’s chanting softly all the while he weaves his hands through the radiance, which seems to keep growing brighter. It looks badass, Dean thinks, seriously badass. Though that much magic makes him feel decidedly uncomfortable. The pitch of Gus’ voice rises and as his chant gets louder the sounds from the demons outside diminish. Then the moonlight seems to jump out of his hands and dart to each of the little containers of water so it looks to Dean as though the other man is at the centre of a matrix of silver: lines going in every direction. _Ego vos exercizo,_ Gus voice has become throaty and the words coming from his mouth sound deeper than they should, as though they were being said by many voices. He can’t make out the words Gus is using until he hears the final _Daemones effugate._ Complete silence outside. The silver light fades to leave the single moonbeam where it was. “I think I got about fifteen, maybe one or two more,” Gus says, sounding very tired. “Awesome,” says Dean. “No, I mean it, that was awesome - a mass exorcism with just your own voice, sort of. I had no idea that could be done.” Gus walks over to the window and looks out, “Trouble is, dude, that isn’t even half of them,” he says. “Something tells me this is going to be a really long night.” He sighs. “Still they can’t get in - I’ve sealed us off from them. Uh...more or less.” He looks as though he’s about to go and sit on the couch but there’s a screech from outside that becomes the sound of ripping and tearing, like a gap is being torn in the air itself. Gus sidles up to the net and peers out. “Dude, you know that bit of the LOTR when they’re trying to get out of Moria and Gandalf’s path is suddenly blocked by this really BAMF, you know fiery whips and huge black wings?”

“The Balrog?”

“That’s it. Well, I kind of hate to tell you this but we’ve just been awarded one all our own.”

“A Balrog?”

“One of the Fallen, I guess –amounts to the same thing though by the looks of it, and I am not a wielder of the sacred flame of Arnor, or is that the secret flame?”

“Knowing the text by heart–could you be more uncool!”

Gus nods and laughs though it sounds a bit nervous and then he risks another look outside.

“Oh shit–now it’s killing some of the demons. It just grabbed about five of them and squeezed and they’ve disappeared.” Dean is frustrated he can’t see what is going on and he yanks himself up to sit with his back flush against the wall–only to realise he has got to twist agonizingly forward to get hold of the knife. “What the fuck is it doing now?” he shouts over the noise from outside.

“It was just standing there impassively UNTIL it heard the sound of your voice,” Gus chides him. “Shit, it’s unfurled its wings – to their full extent I mean, they’re like these huge black sails. Sails with claws on.”

“Is that bad?”

‘And I am supposed to know that how?”

“Dude, you can weave moonbeams. You’re kind of an expert on Balrogs.”

“And how to reuse a diaper, let’s not forget that crucial skill–It’s doing something else now but I can’t see what...”

“Gus, check out the door.”

The ward Gus had inscribed on it the day before blazes up like molten gold but after a few seconds it fizzles into nothingness, leaving just some soot in the air.

A black stain appears on the wood; it grows slowly to begin with: first it’s just a saucer-shaped mark then it’s the size of a dinner plate and at that point it drips off to land with a plop on the floor. The blackness starts slowly sending out tendrils across the room. Inky vines that creep across the floor towards the bed. When they come across some of the containers of consecrated water, they skirt round them. Gus all too clearly has no idea what it is. He looks confused and shakes his head to clear it.

“I don’t think we want that stuff touching us,” Gus says a bit lamely.

“What is it?”

“I’d heard you could be…” whatever he was about to say it’s all too obvious he makes a choice to soften the blow, “‘…uh… really irritating... And you’re kind of living up to your rep, you know. This is so above my paygrade.”

Dean is just about to ask what they should do next when he realises this may not be the best moment. And then he almost asks Gus how he heard that. Instead he makes a mouth-zipping gesture.

“Good,” Gus says through gritted teeth as he looks desperately round the room for something to wrap around his hands.

The stuff is inching towards Dean on the bed and coming at him from several directions at once. There’s a strange groaning from outside: it slowly dawns on both of them that it is the sound of expectation, there’s something unpleasantly sexual about the noise.

“‘Right,” Gus says. “They can’t come in, not yet, and if I go out I wouldn’t last long with that thing there as well. The ‘moonbeam plaiting’ as you called it wasn’t for the exorcism by the way but for what comes next. Time for us to go.” He picks up two of the containers from the floor and pours one over himself. He starts moving towards Dean while pouring the contents of the other slowly in front of him: there’s a thin stream connecting the spot where the moonlight strikes the floor and the footprints he leaves on his way to the bed. Just as he gets there, the groaning outside reaches fever pitch. Where the odd moonbeam hits the black stuff, the light turns a repellent corpse-like grey colour. The sight unsettles him for a moment. Then Gus scoots under the bed and pulls out the dish. He smirks at Dean as he throws the contents over him: “I put a little bit of extra mojo into that one. Tends to make it wetter.” He grabs the slip from off the pillow and squeezes whatever drops fell on it out onto the floor. He then sits down on the bed with his back to Dean. “For my next trick we’ve got to get to that shaft of moonlight coming in the window on the right, which means you’ve got to clamber on and let me carry you piggy-back. Don’t worry about your stitches opening. It’s too late for that. Besides,” he adds darkly, “the blood will help. We need to be there like yesterday so if you could be quick about it.” Dean manages to pass him the folded knife before he gets up onto his knees behind him. The pain is so excruciating he almost faints. He throws his arms around Gus’ shoulders and Gus locks his hands over them but he can’t get his legs to slip around the other man’s waist. Gus stands up, groaning at the load. The tendrils are already at the bottom of the bedstead and climbing up the posts. There’s another about a foot from Gus’s left shoe. Gus bends forward from the waist and swings his way as best he can along the watery path he made, Dean’s longer body dragging slightly as it hangs from his shoulders. The water has all but drained into the flooring but it still seems able to keep the black stuff at bay. And then one of the tendrils rises off the floor and sways towards Dean. It strikes and slips off the wet flesh of his calf – that brief touch burned so bad he wanted to scream. And then they are in the full force of the moon. Gus allows Dean to slip back a bit so the older man can take some of the weight on his feet. He tells Dean to keep his arms around his neck. He can feel the blood leaking out of Dean’s chest soaking through the back of his own shirt. It drips onto the floor, forming a tiny pool around their feet. Gus releases one of Dean’s arms in order to remove the knife he had given him from where he had tucked it into his waistband (the handle was sticking into Dean’s groin in a particularly painful way.) He unfolds the blade and says in a whisper.

“In case you are interested Dean, this comes out of the.... You know, interested in a technical sense. Fuck, I’m only trying to tell you this cos I am really nervous.”

Gus slashes at the skin over his own wrists with the blade just enough to make blood start to trickle, not that Dean can see him do it.

“ _Venite nunc in luminem lunae, trans liminem luminis umbrae solis. De corde terrae, de corde huius mundi_.”

Dean feels his consciousness flickering but the words sound oddly sweet and clear - like no spell he has ever heard; it’s as if they possess a lightness and clarity all their own. He thinks he understands them: Come now in the light of the moon, across the threshold of the light of the sun’s shadow. From the heart of the earth, from the heart of this world.

“It’s from the Third Dynasty of Ur and passed down the generations along the Hidden Way but known only from a copy in Old Persian. A translation that has been translated and retranslated until it found the Latin form I am using. Keep this to yourself, but I’m sort of hoping it won’t be so garbled as to be worthless. Oh and maybe I should mention I’m severely dyslexic as well. Let’s hope the tribute swings it for us:

_Cum sanguine meo vos invoco, ad salvationem Decani, conbrosini mei,vos invoco. Venite nunc.”_

“What’s the tribute?” Dean mutters, he’s lost so much blood he sounds drunk.

“A gross of demons and a prince of hell,” Gus whispers.

With my blood I invoke you, for the salvation of Decanus my _conbrosinus_ I invoke you. Come now.

“ _Conbrosinus_?” Dean gurgles.

“A family thing, I told you that already.”

 _“Venite nunc in luminem lunae, trans liminem luminis umbrae solis. De corde terrae, de corde huius mundo,”_ Gus repeats, and then repeats it again, louder each time as he feels himself beginning to weaken from the wounds to his wrists.

_“Paratus sum pretium solvere.”_

The expectant groaning from outside has turned into a frenzied shrieking. The walls are being pummelled by the fists of demons whose hands are burning from contact with the salt. One tries to climb in the window but the brilliant moonlight burns it to nothingness.  Then there is the sound of great wings flapping as though something were trying to lift off. “What price,” Dean wonders fuzzily, “Prepared to pay what price?” His hands let go as his mind slips away but Gus grabs them and holds fast with his own blood-covered fingers. He takes a deep breath and shouts as loud as he can:

“ _Invoco_!”

 

And as the last syllable dies away, the moonlight entering through the larger window in a steady silver stream flickers green; a green that is almost black. It starts to wreathe, to coil in on itself, thickening into a mist that spills over the sill. There are terrible, gut-wrenching screams outside that seem to go on forever and brilliant flashes of golden light. The room is filling with shadows; dark shapes forming inside them. And then dissolving into new forms. There is a sudden powerful shift in the strength of the light and it is as though Gus can see the room in negative. Or an infra-red image: greenish and ghastly. The black tendrils are retreating back to the door but before they get there they start to fizzle and evaporate. There’s a loud crash then from beyond the door: a sound like a tree snapping in the wind and collapsing on its side. Gus squeaks, “Dean, if you can hear me, I think that was the Fallen One...uh...falling.” Whatever the things that have come through the window are, they’re still smoke and moonbeams - at first they look weirdly inanimate like cut-outs, all angles, needing to be fitted together–then as they tumble over themselves they begin to seem organic. They are immaterial like shadows but constantly on the verge of becoming solid. Huge backs, ridged scales, vast beaks and fangs and something like a tree start gradually piecing themselves together only to collapse back into shapelessness. It is the lack of distinctness that is so gut-wrenchingly terrifying. Gus realises he has wet himself. He reaches back with his hand to find Dean still upright, still behind him. He has backed up to the bed without any knowledge of doing so. Dean’s arm is the only solid thing in existence. He strokes the other man’s pulse with a finger–there, just the suggestion of a heartbeat. It feels almost impossibly intimate but he needs the human touch just to stay sane.

There are no more noises from outside the cabin and almost total silence reigns around him. A shape rears in front of him for a moment, hooded and appalling with endless rows of teeth, but then staggers and folds itself into the fog that is getting denser across the floor and then begins to rise again. A patch of darkness, shiny and dark green like holly, grows into a huge bird of prey before his eyes. Its feathers look like snakeskin as it appears on the point of solidifying. His heart is beating wildly from terror; it feels like it is going to leap out of his chest. He twists his head half round to see that Dean’s eyes are closed; he is smiling and swaying while the blood pours out of his chest and from his other wounds: it looks like treacle. When he turns back the raptor becomes a panther: a large cat so black it sucks in all the light. Its head brushes the ceiling, its silver-flecked emerald eyes keep him pinned in place. Its maw opening, it is about to pounce and rip them apart when it just fades into the walls.

With a sound like water being sucked back down a pipe, all the shadows, all the coiling, prowling shapes suddenly rush back out the window in a torrent.

And then the moonlight turns into silver fire as it erupts back into the room; the walls are blasted away into empty space, the roof is gone along with the bed, but he can sense Dean still standing behind him. It’s only then he realises he has the other man’s hand clutched tightly within his own. The night sky above them is starless and vast. They are standing in the heart of a forest clearing. Impossibly tall trees rear up around them in a circle. The sudden scent of pine-pitch is overpowering; the smell is enough to make his heart race. He feels Dean stagger behind him. And his hand is pulled away. He looks round. “Woah–that was bracing,” the injured hunter says as he shakes his head. “Clear as a fucking bell, dude–what is that stuff? And where are we?”

Gus shrugs. An owl calls. A huge shadow swoops. There is a tiny cry that is abruptly cut off. Then it is as if that little noise unleashes all the others: the night is filled with the hunting screams of cats, very big cats, some distant, some sound close by; there are growls all around them and the haunting cries of raptors from above.  A wind picks up and with it come howls. But worst of all is the sliding, the whisper of long bodies moving through the grass at their feet, a thrum that becomes a hissing, a dry insistent rustle. He is frozen to the spot. “I can’t move my feet,” he says to Dean. He feels a burst of warmth at his groin. The moment of his body’s betrayal makes him laugh out loud; miraculously, sheer embarrassment can take the edge off the worst terror. “Dude, I just lost control of my bladder. For like the second time in five minutes.” It’s as if being so forcefully reminded of your own frailty, your humanness with all its limitations and bodily functions is absurdly comforting. “How come we’re still standing when we appear to be wearing most of our blood?” Dean asks in amazement, completely ignoring Gus’ confession.

“Ahem, there’s something round your neck, kid, like a shadow and now I can’t move either.”

Gus closes his eyes with a sigh, not wanting to look at it, and really pissed at being called kid.

“And now there’s one on me as well,” he hears then.

He manages to turn his upper body round though his feet feel stuck to the forest floor. A scarf seems to be coiling frantically around Dean’s neck like a glistening gilded rope. The moonlight catches the skin on the serpent and fires it gold. And wouldn’t you know it, opening his eyes means he can see the silver-grey snake drooped around his own shoulders; a loop drops down across his chest and the head rises to face him. Triangular and awful; sullen and deadly. Oh please, he thinks, not in the eyes. Even so, it takes all the courage he can muster to turn and look away, exposing his throat, and see, to his utter dismay, an identically shaped but golden head poised in front of Dean’s head. He sees it strike just as he feels the fangs entering his own neck. As he falls he is blind but he can feel endless coils covering him, metallic almost, dry and rasping. _Paratus sum pretium solvere_ , okay I said I was ready to pay the price, only I wasn’t, he thinks wistfully, not totally, and then he is gone.

 


	9. The Me of Weariness Part Two

Chapter Nine: The _Me_ of Weariness Part Two

Early Fall, 2032, near Stanford

 

Sam has left the door to the Dead Guy’s room slightly ajar and he can hear his daughter laughing gleefully at something Gus just said that is too far away for him to make out. They’re all taking a break before what Bird has christened the Punishing of the Jacket. There are papers strewn across his desk that he will soon place inside a file marked for his daughter’s attention before he replaces it in the left hand drawer of the desk. And there’s the rub: because going to Montana means leaving his only daughter, his pregnant daughter, to manage on her own, maybe only for a week but possibly forever. If he doesn’t come back, she will become Bird’s guardian while having to cope with the birth of her child.

She knows how to access his accounts, and the guardianship is already designated. There are advantages to being a lawyer after all. He is pretending not to be worried about Bird, perhaps because it is a tiny bit easier to worry about his daughter coping than to contemplate the potentially catastrophic impact on Bird of his father’s death. And that thought– though it isn’t really that thought because he is refusing to think it– the shadow of that thought perhaps is what makes him lean forward and rest his forehead on the backs of his hands before him on the desk. She was such a serious and determined child that the sound of Nell laughing has always felt like it was setting something free inside him; like he’d been holding his breath for that moment– only it isn’t working now.

And as for his brother, it has only been in the last few years–since he was widowed and once the children were a bit older and really only when he is away from home– and especially late at night in a deserted city whose streets would be empty apart from the black slick of rain and the soft golden haloes the droplets of falling water brought out around the streetlights– that he has felt the old sadness starting up inside him.  Although it wasn’t really the sadness that was the real problem; even if he felt haunted by them, by all his dead, they didn’t make him feel inadequate or lost, a broken man. But Dean...Dean was too much, much too much, to lose back then, and now maybe... I’m afraid, he admits to himself, I’m afraid. I don’t want to feel like my insides have been torn out again. And with a blunt knife because he hadn’t seen him die, he hadn’t felt him go, so he could never be entirely sure.

His wife, well that was different again, because he had held her dead body and had known in every fibre of his being that she wasn’t coming back and even if her dying had been exactly like having his guts ripped out over and over and over again she has become so integrated a part of him in the years since and she is so obviously and so forever present in their children that loss really isn’t an adequate word for what he feels about her, for that there is only music maybe.

Only what you’re really afraid of Sam, he tells himself, isn’t of losing Dean...again...be honest... what you’re really afraid of is Dean rejecting you, of Dean not wanting anything to do with you–which is apparently what he has been telling you the last twenty years.

His phone rings quietly which is doubly irritating because he could swear he’d turned it off. So he ignores it as he turns his head to gaze at the dizzy patterns of light swirling off the window onto the lane; the sun is often brilliant at this time of day and something about the angle of the rays, or just the quantity of dust on the pane, makes those reflections oddly hypnotic, and it strikes him then that that is exactly what grief can be as well. He groans even more quietly at the notion of his own one-track-bloody-mind.  It is so easy to get lost, to dwell on what might be irretrievable, whenever you find your perception narrowing to a single point in the past. He really needs to think about the future instead. There’s the possibility of an end to that particular grief after all but for some reason he seems incapable of grasping that. The other side of being honest though is having to admit how much guilt he felt and still feels and how deeply he is convinced he should somehow have managed to save his brother–no matter the odds.   And then again this is all so like him, being unable to let things go when stressed, having to revisit what troubles him as he is doing now–his father would have had a field day. You think too much, Sam. That’s your problem. And his brother would have mocked the need he felt to talk about it–as if that could help. Man up, Sam. That contempt they’d both felt for the vulnerability he alone in the family ever chose to express. Though he thought that maybe his brother might have valued it in some way too. As if his efforts to protect Sam weren’t also a way of shielding the vulnerability he wouldn’t allow himself to feel. And it didn’t matter how determined he was not to share that contempt... because maybe they were right. And maybe it isn’t really about vulnerability but about refusing to face up to reality. The reality of guilt and loss and of maybe, just maybe...of saving Dean and getting his brother back.

He didn’t hear her come in so he starts just a bit when he feels Nell’s cool hand on the back of his neck and then eases back into an upright position careful not to kink his long spine. She smiles wryly at him and then chuckles at exactly the same moment he does. They both turn to look out the open window and Nell takes a deep breath of the thyme-scented air.

“What would my mother have said to you?” she asks almost absently.

“I’ll kill you for abandoning our daughter when she needs you,” Sam replies without a hitch.

“I don’t think so, pops.”

She turns to catch his eye and then he just can’t help smiling and that gets him a pleased little laugh from his daughter. Sam looks down at his hands.

“Mom would say ‘Reasonable precautions always–but,’” and there Nell pauses for her father to join in and complete the phrase, which he does but with a huff: “ ‘–no matter how much you feel drawn to the unreasonable ones you can never ever protect yourself from life, you’ll never get the better of it.’”

She moves round the desk to put her arm across one of his shoulders to whisper:

 “Dude, admit she was good...and not just at the mother thing, the wise thing as well...”

“Dude,” her father comes back and he is the only person she allows to call her ‘dude’, “that is my line...”

 

And now she’s got his attention, somehow she knows his mood has lifted, she tells him while they both continue looking out of the window that she has been in touch with the Sisterhood in Billings, through Tam, and preparations have been made for a helping hand, a very discreet helping hand.  It only needed a word or two, and Gus and he will be watched over, discreetly, once they get there by a trio of youngish Sisters in the first instance with an older white witch somewhere close by. And the reason he heard her laugh was that Gus was called by a loremeister buddy of his who’d only just found out he was alive and who was kind of really pissed at him and incredibly relieved and who kept swearing so loudly Nell and Bird couldn’t help overhearing a lot of that side of the conversation as well. Anyway this guy, Nate, is _draconis_ and will get to Billings the day after they do together with a witchfinder, and Gus thinks there is a chance, okay a slim one, that even if somehow the truth about who Dean is gets out they can be persuaded not to reveal her uncle’s identity.

“ _Draconis_?” Sam asks in that slightly embarrassed tone he reserves for his own ignorance.

“They’re less numerous than _explicans_ or _contra maleficos_ – high-powered battle mages who specialise in monsters but can tackle both demons and witches. So that should be three loremeisters, okay so Gus is maybe only a half right now, but two and a half of the big guns anyway, so I am a lot less concerned, really Dad, and you might even be able to save your brother and be back in time for tea which would be kind of...”

“Awesome?” Sam responds.

That earns him a mock-appalled grimace at first and then a kind of resigned nod. She kisses his cheek before leaving him to finish the legal stuff.

 

They’re sitting at the table when he returns to the kitchen. Nell has removed the eidolon from the kitchen wall and replaced it with the schematic for one of her college engineering projects. She seems much more relaxed while studying it. Gus is running a hand lightly over the surface of the table in front of him–again, appreciating both the patina and the grain of the wood; it is obvious to all of them he is trying to distract himself. Bird can’t help picking another strand of grass out of Gus’ hair as he passes him on the way to the refrigerator while Sam is looking at his daughter with a proud smile on his face.

“It’s some kind of barrage, isn’t it?” Gus asks. “Wave-power generation?” he goes on.

“Almost,” Nell replies. “It’s a sub-surface inshore filtration system that generates electricity as a by-product of water purification.”

“Who designed it?” their guest asks her.

“I did,” she answers. “But it needs quite a bit of development before it could go into operation. Still in the planning stages.”

“Man on the freaking Mound, how can you do such high-level work while training for...uh...you know...our thing?” Gus asks.

Bird to his great credit refrains from the obvious comment about the Mafia.

“I am going to need a mundane career. Does that...” Nell says pointing at the schematic, “...really seem much more difficult than your own work?”

“Yeah, it does. Like way more demanding and impressive. Besides we all know that cleaning the oceans is the most vital task we face if the planet is going to survive.”

Nell just nods.

“And can I say as your second cousin once re-...” but Bird and Nell interrupt him at the same time with:

“You had us at ‘uncle’,” which is also when Sam tells him he should quit while he’s ahead.

“Okay as your uncle can I just say how...uh... proud I am of the work you are doing? Without claiming in any way that what I think is important.”

Nell manages to chuckle in appreciation and amusement at the same time, without taking her eyes of the schematic on the wall. Gus can’t really get his head round her being light-hearted as he recalls her laughter when Nate called if only because she has spent almost the entire time they have known one another looking after him.

“What he said,” Sam gets in with a tip of his head towards Gus.

“That would be your cousin,” Bird retorts.

Though the more his mental faculties have come back to him and his memory in particular, the more Gus feels he understands Sam’s apparent reluctance to trust him. You can’t devote a lot of your life to defeating demons not to be well versed in their practise of deceit and the necessity of defending against it. And given Sam’s story or what he knows of it, the brothers were targeted by some of the most deceitful bad guys ever to walk the planet so no wonder trusting strangers is difficult. Deceit, guile, treachery, the list could go on for a long time but what it comes down to, one way or another, is mendacity. Or, when it comes to demons, an indifference to the truth that is otherwise seen only among psychopaths. The trouble is that in order to succeed at this game, at fighting evil, part of you at least has to remain open and vulnerable otherwise you start to resemble what you are fighting. That means that you are always on the back foot to some extent. Witches tend to practise a different form of deviousness than demons but as one of the great _contra maleficos_ (another of his teachers but he’s temporarily forgotten her name even though he recalls her words) once said to him: in the end it is still just telling lies. She had been up against one of the longest lived witches they’d ever encountered; a seven to eight-hundred-year-old man if he remembers right.  As she told Gus after she defeated him, what was so dispiriting wasn’t the lies but the banality. Here was someone who had deliberately courted the great and the good for almost half a millennium, and all he was really interested in was gaining more power and an even longer life. It was while they were in the final stages of their struggle that it had dawned on her that the man had no imagination at all. Other lives failed to impact on him; other people didn’t really exist. He had been witness to historical events of enormous significance but had only paid attention to what was immediately of relevance to him. His focus was entirely on his craft as a witch and on gaining his own personal ends. On killing his opponent, Gus’ temporarily anonymous teacher, with just the right amounts of venom and spite, and that meant he didn’t really see her; he’d failed to grasp what he was up against. ‘Never forget what Arendt wrote about Eichmann because it is just as true of demons and necromancers as the worst human beings,’ she had told him that day, ‘the most terrible thing about evil is that it is banal.’ That said, he couldn’t remember how she got the bastard only that wasn’t the point of her story in any case. Part of him utters a little prayer at that moment then that the witch they will be facing is nowhere near that old. Not too open, not too vulnerable though was the caution the loremeister kind of hurled at him once she had finished that particular anecdote and at which he’d kind of gasped and said why are you telling me that and she’d just looked at him and said, ‘Face it, Gus, a lack of imagination has never been your problem and that is no bad thing, you could, however, do with being a teeny bit more practical and down to earth,’ and she’d paused for a smile then before continuing, ‘banal even.’ Which he hadn’t wanted to hear.  Beth, that was her name, how could he have forgotten? Beth who died at Asphodel along with Rosamund.  Mind you, the fact that he is starting to develop a crush on Sam the size of California, okay the biggest man-crush this side of the Continental Divide, isn’t helping either–a middle-aged, okay, a youthful middle-aged man developing a crush on another middle-aged man who happens to be a father and his second cousin and is completely unattainable: not banal, definitely not banal. Although maybe it is, he realises he has too little experience to be able to judge. It has been years, four, five, more? since his last romantic relationship. On the other hand, he was more dead than alive yesterday–he came this close, and now he’s recovered enough to feel whatever it is that he’s feeling and that has to be a good thing, right? Lust, even if it is more mental than physical, means his vitality is returning. It’s more lust that anything else but what is wrong with that? And besides, he’d kind of fallen for Sam before back when he was a kid. The truth is, and it is a truth he wryly acknowledges to himself that he is reluctant to admit, there must have been something homoerotic in the way he had idolised Sam in his very early teens. Lust and tenderness and the memory of adolescent hero worship. That is life-affirming and sweet after all, and it isn’t as though he is really worried he will slip and let the other man see what he is feeling, but that possibility might even be useful–it will keep him on his toes.

“You still want to do the jacket, dude...uh, cousin?” Sam asks Gus as the other man raises one hand towards Bird in warning as the boy moves in on his hair again. “And we’re sure the jacket is a cursed object and not the...uh...vector for something more targeted?” Nell adds, clearly concerned. Gus wants her to stop having to worry.

“Uh no, not one hundred per cent...but the only way I can find that out is by determining if it was just the pocket or whether, as you suspect, something else is in play,” Gus replies.

“And not forgetting the hexbag,” Bird gets in, but all that gets is a frown from their guest.

“I’ve got my brain back more or less and for some of the time at least so let me just rehash the curse thing...” Gus says looking at Nell, “if that is okay?”

“Let me,” Sam says with a weary but dogged expression, “I’ve been thinking about it–obviously–considering what we are going to be facing: A curse is a kind of spell but one that doesn’t necessarily die when the caster does. But more importantly it gets its power–and curses are an immensely powerful form of spellcraft–from the fact that it is like a puzzle. There has to be way to solve it and therefore to break it. The more powerful the curser, the more intricate the riddle at its heart will be–just to make sure it is all but impossible to break. Or the more absolute the challenge it lays down will be. A very old and a very dangerous witch could build a curse most people would insist could not ever be broken based on a demand they would say could never be met. It’s allowed to be nigh on impossible to break but it cannot be absolutely impossible or it wouldn’t work. Is that about right?”

Gus and Nell nod; Bird looks impressed.

“Whereas the jacket is a cursed object, so though it is imbued with all the potentially enormous power of a curse there is no riddle because its effects depend on contact pure and simple. And it can only be targeted in the sense that its creator succeeds in bringing it in contact with a particular victim?”

“Pops, have you...like... done this before?” Bird asks wide-eyed, which earns him a muffled and very uncool gasp from Gus.

 “I’m enough of a detective to know that Gus is more than slightly pissed right now but to my surprise something tells me that it isn’t with you, Bird,” his father comes back, ignoring the question.

“I am incredibly pissed but your son’s current ministrations are just a minor irritation. That jacket tried to kill me and it helped put my closest friend in a coma. I agree completely with Bird that it deserves to die for its crimes. Only it would be one more nail in my coffin as far as your brother is concerned. Speaking of which you don’t cut hair as well do you, Bird?”

A clearly nonplussed Bird shakes his head and then says he doesn’t when Gus keeps looking back at Sam instead of turning to look at him.

“Who cuts your hair normally?” Nell asks.

“Cut would be an elegant way of putting it. Either I run the clippers over it myself or if I’m...uh...at home... Dean’ll do it...if he’s feeling magnanimous.”

“I thought he was as much of an asshole as me?” Sam asked, and it is very clear all of a sudden how much that rankled.

Gus has the grace to look embarrassed.

“Truth is...while he can extremely irritating, your brother has been unfailingly generous to me. He gave me a home. He made me feel I had some kind of family for the first time in my adult life. I even get free board and uh “tuition”... when I’m there. He’s only ever asked one thing of me during the entire eight years...and that is my solemn promise not to contact you Sam and never to tell you that he is alive. No, the truth is I was just working my way up to punching you back...uh...cousin, and it sounded like a good line.”

It’s not as if the promise Gus made to Dean comes as a complete surprise to Sam but it is all he can pay attention to so he just nods rather than pretend to care about the pretext for the punch.

Gus is very clearly tired of the sound of his own voice. He gets up with a sigh and then marches back out into the yard. Sam offers a hand to his daughter as she hoists herself out of the chair.  They all end up watching Gus from just outside the back door. As he moves there is a silvery sheen that surrounds him and appears to move with him.  It seems to be covering his hands as well when he bends down by the asphodel and pulls the jacket out from where it was concealed under the bush.

“That’s his panoply,” Bird whispers to Sam, “At least he’s well enough to get it up and running.”

Gus puts the jacket onto the garden chair he had been sitting on before and places the chair in the middle of the yard facing the house. Bird moves up behind Gus whose attention is focused on the jacket.

“I’m only here to catch you if you fall,” Bird whispers in Gus’ ear as he wraps his hands lightly round his waist and tucks his head onto the older man’s shoulder so he can see.

“In any case like that you will be shielded as I am by my panoply, so feel free,” Gus responds and there is a definite edge to his voice. To the others the shimmering silver outline seems to firm up slightly and fill in. Sam and Nell have taken up position a yard or so away by the herbs. Their guest turns to look at them and nods as his silver clad hands flicker, weaving too fast for Nell to make out what spell he is casting but she can feel the barrier that suddenly springs into being around her and her father.

“What is that?” Sam says. “I can feel it but I can’t see it.”

“It’s protection for us. A ward of some kind,” Nell replies though that is all she knows. “I think he’s good at those, wards, I mean.”

Then Gus turns slightly towards them and goes over the reasons why it is necessary to re-examine the jacket. He tells them how much he had disliked that jacket, particularly the way it smelled. Their uncle never wore it anymore but kept it as a memento, hanging in the mudroom. A couple of days after the accident he, Gus, suddenly felt suddenly drawn to it, and even if that wasn’t enough to make him put it on, he nevertheless found himself stroking it. Not something he assures them that he would ever normally do. The wornness and suppleness of the leather seemed to exert a pull on him.  He can remember the timing more or less exactly because it was then or just before that he started to get confused and the brainfog had already begun to descend so he had made a note in his diary since he was feeling so troubled. The date it began, he meant to say, as he was afraid he was getting one of those...whatdyacall’em... sudden-onset dementias. He wasn’t usually given to hypochondria but everything had begun to feel so overwhelming. It wasn’t until a week or so after the accident that he actually put it on for the first time. Besides the timing of the brainfog would tie in with the fact that his defences hadn’t protected him from the prompt. He should have understood what was happening and he didn’t.

 “But how sure can you be... of the date,” Bird chose that moment to ask, “I mean you said you’d been confused, in a brainfog?”

“This will sound weird, and maybe it is slightly embarrassing... but that’s because I wrote the date out in...uh...cuneiform, you know what that is, right?”

“One of the earliest writing systems invented by man, maybe even the earliest, like five thousand years ago, or about 3200BCE...” Bird responds without pausing for breath.

“It’s just most fifteen year olds wouldn’t know that, in fact most of my students would have to look it up, so my bad...anyway I wrote it out in cuneiform and that’s not something I normally do although I have the necessary skill; I kind of save it for significant events, and then I went and forgot about it completely until I was thinking in the grass about the hex and its ribbon and the letters that were inscribed on it. And I was able to visualise the page in my journal exactly as I had written it.”

“What ribbon?” Nell asked.

“Oh right, I never got round to telling you that because that only came back to me when I was lying on the lawn. The hex had a spell written out in cuneiform letters on a thin band of clay around the ribbon tying the twigs together. And there were bits of clay amongst the twigs as well. The cuneiform was in the archaic abstracted glyphs typical of the period 3000 to 2800 BCE, though I can’t promise I’m being completely accurate about the dating.”

“Dude, what did it say?”An impatient Bird almost yells at him.

 “Ù, which with a grave accent means ‘sleep’ in the language of Sumer, followed by the word for ‘forever’ and then the phrase ‘wake not’. The opposite more or less of your drumming.”

Bird is reduced to silence if only because his arms are still around Gus’ middle and a verbal riposte might be just a bit too provocative even from him.

“Though really all you’ve done is establish that you felt ‘prompted’ to put it on,” Sam butts in, “and not a direct causal connection between the cursed object and your mental and physical problems...but I admit that the way you began to recover once it was removed is a powerful argument...”

Gus holds up a hand and shakes his head; he’s getting tired. He looks back at the jacket lying across the chair so that the lining is facing outwards. He sketches four slapdash glyphs in the air while humming something that is all but inaudible. That’s a scrollworker’s spell, Nell thinks, _Surge ad lucem_ ; it is what an exorcist employs to call hidden demonic forces into the light, so maybe it works against other kinds of magic as well–if that is what this is. Gus steps back slightly with his eyes still fixed on the garment in front of him. “In case you’re interested, Sam, that particular working was invented to force hellhounds to become visible, I am not the slightest bit ashamed to admit that I’ve never seen one and thankfully now, or ever since the battle at Asphodel, I never will.” It only takes another moment or two after he stops speaking before an eerily familiar pattern begins to emerge against the jacket lining. At first just bits of a circular inscription of wedge-shaped letters and then more of the design with an almost fractal shape outlined in silver at the centre. A dull grey silver more like lead. The inscriptions slowly turn darker and sharper. There is no _Me_ at the heart of the design just a whorl of cuneiform although the letters seem to grow more and more clearly defined until the effect is almost three-dimensional. And then, very slowly almost laboriously, another pattern, black vines this time starts to emerge as well, crossing languidly over and under the silver lines, putting forth curlicues that hint at dark flowers blooming, the second design is both a lot fainter and much less well defined.

“Shit,” Gus says as he backs away and Bird extricates himself. The panoply winks out. “The lining serves as a kind of amplifier, I think, augmenting the power of the _Me_ on the back of the pocket. My guess is the amplifier went into overdrive when you ripped the pocket out. Nell’s intuition about it being the whole thing was spot on, and that was what saved my life. As I said that colour is associated with death. The inscription reads, ‘Weariness of thought becomes weariness of spirit which leads to weariness with life. And so comes the weariness unto death.’ And although it is far less powerful than the _Me_ you burned, the magic in the inscription would also wear away at whoever wore the jacket, grinding them down. All the way down until there was nothing left.”

“So a mini- _Me_ more or less?” and that is, of course, Bird.

Gus swivels his head to look at him open-mouthed before throwing his hands in the air and then succumbing to a fit of hysterical giggles that ends with him having to rest his hands on his knees to catch his breath. I’ve got to remember I almost died yesterday, he tells himself, no one is expecting me to be calm and in control–except me!

“I’ve seen something like those black vine things before,” Sam gets in. “But that was a hex,” he blushes before admitting, “a...uh...have sex or die spell cast by a witch.”

“You’re right, Dad, at least I think you are: like a hedge witch’s love philtre or a potion to make you fall in love against your will, only a lot more complex,” Nell says with a frown that she follows with an encouraging little grin for her father. Sure and why wait– take me to the assisted living facility right now, Sam thinks in response.

“Yup, the black squiggles are what made me want to wear the jacket,” Gus says. “It’s much less sophisticated than the death magic, and would have been much less time-consuming and energy-draining to cast. I can’t tell you though how it got through–it shouldn’t have worked on me and neither should the coin. Relatively simple compared with the silver work but that is still a very artful allure spell particularly when worked into an inanimate object.”

“So it’s safe to assume that the hex, as in the hexbag, was for Dean because he ended up in a coma but you are the victim, intended or not, of the jacket,” Sam points out.

“I think it affected Dean as well, the jacket, I mean,” Gus says in reply. “I mean I can’t help thinking, based on what we have discovered, that it must have played a role in his accident.”

“Someone wants you both dead,” Bird echoes his father.

Nell adds that whoever was out to get them seemed to be quite happy to play a waiting game.

“Someone who doesn’t know much about me though,” Gus responds. “An unwarded human would have been dead within a month. Something is telling me that the person who placed the curse on the jacket was hoping to incapacitate or kill Dean’s housemate, or even his ‘partner’, whoever that might be. And didn’t know they were warded. Maybe.”

Sam decides to say what is on all their minds,

“The fact, if that is what it is, that the witch has failed to understand that Dean’s ‘partner’ is a loremeister could be our ace in the hole, couldn’t it?”

“Though it does seem kind of weird on the other hand that you should just happen to have some familiarity with the lore that comes to us out of Sumer,” Bird gets in.

“Definitely suspicious,” Sam adds, though Gus thinks that he is only half-serious.

“Not really. It’s what I do. I mean in the mundane world. I teach, or I did–I’m sort of assuming I’m unemployed by now–but until the accident I was an assistant professor at Three Graces teaching a course called Magic and Myth in the Ancient World.” Gus responds calmly while looking more at Sam than at Bird. “And Sumer is one of my specialist academic fields. It occurs to me by the way that the phrase on the hex ribbon is an exact inversion of an invocation to Ninhursag, goddess of earth, for protection from evil, more particularly from demons: ‘Sleep Not, Wake Forever’, which implies that our ‘witch’ has a knowledge of the period that may be equal or superior to mine. I also think that makes it increasingly unlikely that he or she knows what I am or what I do. I get a sense that the witch doesn’t think I’m important– just someone in the way but that is more of an intuition and I don’t feel any great degree of confidence in it.”

“The lore from Sumer and Mesopotamia is some of the most ancient magic there is, isn’t it?” Nell asks.

“That is a really loaded question, _nipote mia_ ,” Gus tells his ‘niece’, “because ‘lore’ both as we use the term and as we practise it, is codified, or written down at least, though that wouldn’t be true of the Sisters, say, and there were millennia prior to the invention of writing during which magic and spellcraft, necromancy and shamanism were handed down in an oral tradition. There were demons and witches long before Nineveh or Ur rose on the plains between the rivers.”

Bird holds up a hand before asking in a bored tone of voice “Do we need to go back to the _Me_ on the kitchen wall, or,” it’s clear he thinks he knows all this stuff and then his voice brightens perceptibly, “can we proceed to the Rite of the Punishing of the Jacket?”

“We can but it has dawned on me that the working I was going to use will be too draining even with the prism. I mean I was going to just burn it off with lore...it is after all really filthy stuff... and what no one else here seems to believe...still extremely dangerous,” Gus responds a bit huffily but there is no mistaking his concern.

“And you’re sure you won’t let me do it, I mean it is fairly clear that I would only be in danger if I was in actual contact with the thing, so are you...sure?” Nell asks.

“Nice try, _mia cara_ , and as long as you don’t think this is a male-female thing when it is about me needing to avoid any risk to the child you carry...” Gus tries.

“Sounds like a male-female thing to me,” Bird chirps.

“Did you just chirp?” Sam can’t resist.

“Only if all you’ve got to do is cleanse the jacket of evil why can’t you, you know, ‘lustrate’ it? And I don’t chirp, occasionally my vocal chords malfunction...So, yeah, what’s wrong with a lustration?”

Gus jaw drops and his head swivels again but this time to look at Nell. It is a little unsettling that he can somehow do that without moving any of his other muscles.

“Out of the mouths of babes...” he says then.

 “I think the expression is actually ‘out of the mouths of babes and sucklings’,” Sam gets in rather pointedly with a particular sweet glance over at his son. 

“Though, lustrations are _foci_ , aren’t they?” Bird asks, looking at his sister and completely ignoring Sam.

“Remind me what the difference is again?” his father demands.

“ _Foci_ are the loremeisters of the hearth, primarily defensive and protective, although it is a bit more complicated than that whereas the _magistri belli_ are the battle mages,” his son explains.

“The _foci_ are considerably better at them, but even us poor _belli_ can manage a lustration when required,” Gus says in reply to Bird’s question.

“I’m thinking a low level purification, spraying or washing with some kind of sacred fluid, maybe,” Nell suggests.

“We could try milk and yarrow or maybe holy water and sage,” Gus proposes. “It is possible something low-key might actually work.” He pauses before adding: “It is intriguing that Bird knows as much as he does about the workings of the Magistracy, but I can’t see any point, at the moment at least, in looking a gift horse in the mouth, not one that chirps in any case.”

“I suppose that means you want me to get you a glass of milk, your worship?” Bird retorts scathingly.

Gus just smiles winningly at him. Sam walks over to the herb bed and plucks some flower heads from the yarrow plants.

“This is pretty gross,” Gus announces as he pours the tiny heads of yarrow into the milk glass Bird eventually brings him without seeming to spill a drop. He gives the whole thing a good stir first clockwise and then widdershins. The silvery inscriptions on the inside of the jacket are just starting to fade when he abruptly hurls the milk all over the lining. Nell comes over to stand next to him and his panoply extends sideways to cover her while pulling away from Bird who is behind the two of them. Then they wait for five minutes with a lot of shuffling of feet and repeated sighs from Bird in particular.

“When are you going to call it?” he eventually asks Gus, “as in time of death?”

“Oh maybe another quarter of an hour: the milk’s got to penetrate the leather and then the oils have to seep out of the plant fibres. I dunno that could even take another half hour I guess or even a whole one.” That last word is followed by a blast of strangely guttural consonants without a single vowel.

“Please don’t tell me that was ‘Patience is a virtue’ in Klingon?” Nell asks with a frown and what despite her best efforts is almost a titter.

“More or less, the ‘virtue’ thing is a bit difficult to get over and the parallel concept is actually fairly grisly in practice but the sentiment is more or less the same.”

“Yeah, well this is death by a thousand cuts,” Bird huffs.

Gus looks at him in mock puzzlement.

“I thought I just said that.”

 

“Okay,” Gus admits half an hour later, “time for something else: Nell, do you remember the glyphs for _Igne Sancto_?”

“I think so, there are four, aren’t there? Tricky and elaborate in that _foci_ way that can be so irritating. Unless you’re thinking of _Igne Sanctissimo_ which would be totally beyond me.”

“No, it’s the lower level working I want. Even if I could do the higher one, I think all that would be left of the jacket would be a smoking ruin. And you’re preaching to the converted  about _foci_ glyphs. Mind numbing.”

Sam has worked out that Gus will be attempting a purifying or lustration spell called _By Holy Fire._ While Nell is rehearsing the glyphs with Gus, he leans towards his son and asks him what _draconis_ means: with everything happening so fast he’s forgotten even though he was told only a short while ago. Bird shakes his head before explaining but without the exaggerated patience he would normally display. Another kind of battle mage Sam gets told (again): rarer than _explicans_ and more specialised in heavyweight workings against monsters in general. “The _draco_ bit means ‘dragon’ in Latin,” Bird adds unnecessarily.

“Come to think of it, isn’t Three Graces where the C sends people to study remedial Latin with that Shrek guy? Maybe the C could get you in on one of his courses?” Sam asks his son, the subtext of since you completely refuse to accept my help and boy do you need it isn’t lost on either of them. Which is when it dawns on Bird that his father hadn’t actually forgotten what the term meant.

“Hey Gus, do you know the Ogre; he’s this guy teaches special courses in Latin at Three Graces?” Bird asks apparently unconcerned about distracting Gus while he is attempting to scrawl something in the dirt.

“I didn’t realise his infamy, or do I mean notoriety, had spread as far as California. Anyway the answer is yes but nowhere near as well as your other uncle, the Dead Guy, I mean Dean, he knows him really well; I think he looks after his car, or truck, whatever. I’m busy here by the way,” Gus responds, the expression on his face hidden by the fact that he is staring fixedly at the earth and the patterns he is trying to drawn in it.

When he thinks he’s finally ready, Gus gets to his feet before announcing

“Despite what Bird believes I’m saving the jacket–okay, against my better judgment– and not punishing it. I want this over and done with now even if I am righteously pissed. Besides I’ve got to take it back in one piece and without any taint,” their guest continues. He raises a hand for quiet. Bird moves to stand behind him like before and Nell and Sam step off to the side. Then Gus extends his raised arm so the palm and the underside of the wrist are exposed and the sapphire prism is uppermost. He mutters something that sounds a bit like Klingon to both Nell and Bird even though she knows it can’t be –apparently to himself–and then taps his chest lightly. The silver of his panoply glints like liquid metal; the wards around the watchers flash with a gold light and then he sings two notes on an ascending scale: do re and then three descending sol fa mi. Sam could swear he saw a coherent beam of silvery blue light erupt from the prism and strike the jacket but if he did it was gone the next instant. Even so it still feels like a bit of an anticlimax. Gus sighs.

“All done,” he announces. “Clean as a whistle.” And then he slumps in Bird’s arms.

“Can I touch it now?” Sam asks Nell who nods so he gathers up the jacket from the chair and inspects it. “It does seem familiar but...” he strokes the faded leather that has now been worn to suppleness and sniffs it. Sour milk. Yukk. He looks over at his son who is attempting to haul an unconscious Gus back into the kitchen, “How did he do that?” he asks Bird after a moment of hesitation.

“I’m assuming that was Holy Fire, pops. Only come to think of it I didn’t see a glyph, did you, sis?”

Nell shakes her head and then adds, “He will have written them across his mind. I honestly didn’t know you could tight-focus a working like that, maybe it’s a wizard thing, but the jacket has been scoured clean, no taint, no residue of evil could possibly remain after a lustration like that. I could actually feel it taking effect. It took it out of him though–still I’d be a lot more worried if he hadn’t used the prism.” Gus comes to at those very words and looks over at her.

“Less than five minutes this time. Only I think a period of quiet is called for now. By me,” Nell announces.

Once he’s upright again, they all make their way back into the kitchen. Bird and Nell are the last to enter; there’s a quick exchange of meaningful looks between them that their father catches but is as usual unable to interpret. Sam switches on the kettle then decides he needs coffee first and starts grinding the beans while his son gets the peppermint tisane down off the shelf to make a new herb tea for his sister.  Sam gestures at Gus who nods back at him that he wants coffee and then mimes that he also wants cream but no sugar. Nell is sitting at the table with her eyes closed, a slow smile spreading across her face. Bird places the coin on the table so they can all see it. Then he moves over to the drawer of the cabinet beside the sink and gets out a notepad. He sidles over to his father and reaches inside the breast pocket of the coat he is still wearing to retrieve a ballpoint. Pen and paper get placed beside the coin on the table. Gus looks to Bird for permission and immediately starts drawing something on the paper: a long thin strip of wedge-shaped markings that he seems to be puzzling over.

“By the way, Bird, that really is...the...jacket... your uncle’s jacket,” Gus says softly but looks over at Sam, who hands him a coffee before shrugging out of his coat and sitting next to his daughter. Gus kisses the top of her head and is then a bit taken aback at his own audacity. Sam rolls his eyes at him which sort of makes him feel like he’s being included in the family.

Gus kind of inhales his cup of coffee after that, it has dawned on him that he no longer harbours any ill will toward the other man, which is really not going to help him deal with the crush thing and then looks over at Bird who is obviously itching to ask him something before nodding his assent–it’s supposed to be quiet time after all.

“So, I know that demonologists’ spells are much less effective against witches, if at all. Only Gus was able to counter the magic in the jacket with scrollworker stuff and that means we’re maybe not dealing with a ...” the boy explains to everyone.

“I don’t think it’s that simple,” Sam intervenes, which earns him a cautious nod from Gus. “And besides, the hexbag was witchcraft, I felt it in my bones at the time, and only a witch puts a Sleeping Beauty curse on someone. Could be there’s something else going with the Sumerian stuff, and while I’d lay money that the same witch is still behind it...”

Gus takes a breath as Sam pauses and says,

“I’m going to need a break soon but any loremeister can in theory cast any of the spells available to the Magistracy as a whole. It is a more a matter of interest and focus that determines the kind of workings a scrollworker would employ that a witchfinder might not. The reason my spell worked against the jacket is that it is effective, in part, against death magic; this is a gross oversimplification of a complex and mysterious matter but the hexbag was not meant to kill directly while the jacket, the cursed object, was...”

“Right, like you said... we’re dealing with a necromancer...” Sam doesn’t bother whispering this time.

“Didn’t it use to mean trafficking with the dead though, necromancy I mean?” Bird asks without a smirk; it’s obvious he is both interested and curious.

“Whoa, you’re really freaking me out now, what areas of knowledge, human and arcane, are foreign to you?” Gus gets in. “If any, I mean. You’re not fazed by Sumer or Mesopotamia, Ur and Nineveh? Are you well read in human history as a whole and not just in the lorecraft of the Magistracy?”

“Yeah, but I’m really bad at Latin,” Bird feels forced to admit while Sam mouths the word ‘Genius’ at Gus with a really big smirk.

Nell nods at her brother encouragingly, not that he needs it–obviously: “The term was once reserved for witches of various kinds who sought to survive their own mortality by trafficking with Death–if successful they were effectively reborn as immensely powerful Undead. But there have never been any undead witches in North America, at least as far as we know.”

“That’s a relief,” says Sam.

 

In the end it is Sam who offers to trim Gus’ hair that evening after they have eaten, although like his daughter he refuses to buzz cut it. He just shortens it to the point where it no longer counts as long hair.

“Do I still look like a junkie?” Gus asks Bird who is waiting for them to finish so they can watch one of his favourite episodes.

“Nah, dude, all the cool stuff: the danger, that freaky weirdo shit, has gone, you just look like an uncle now...”

This time a helplessly giggling Nell joins her brother in the hi-five.

“Welcome to my world, dude,” Sam mutters.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


End file.
